Alibaba Says Google Threatened Acer With Banishment From Android

Spy Handler writes "In a Microsoft-esque move, Google threatened Acer with banishment from Android if it went ahead with its new cellphone project with Alibaba (China's version of Amazon), using an OS called Aliyun. Acer has remained silent on the issue, but Alibaba reports that they received notification from Google, stating 'if the new product launch with Aliyun went ahead, Google would terminate Android product cooperation and related technical authorization with Acer.' A possible reason for Google's upset is that the Aliyun OS, which is not Android, can run Android apps as well as its own."

Restraint of Trade

[Brett Buck]

IANAL, but I think this represents restraint of trade. So not only is it (arguably) evil (TM) it likely also illegal.

      Brett

Re:Google is evil

[marsu_k]

I'm not usually so keen to call upon these - but a user with only two posts, with a seemingly Linux-friendly nick, not a subscriber apparently but still manages two posts within a minute of the story being released, another one of those recommending Bing of all things... Just doesn't seem quite genuine to me. Not that I disagree with this being dickish, if true.

Re:Microsoftesque?

[gl4ss]

it would mean shipping it with no play store, with no google music and so forth...

(android isn't exactly free if you want to be "authorized", which means shipping with googles apps and googles api's, and yes there's a subset of the android api's that is for google approved devices only)

Re:Google is evil

[evandrofisico]

Truth is, as most of the code on android is apache licenced or GPL (as the kernel) there is no need to ask google's permission to make anything with it. The only parts of the operating system that are under a non-permissive licence that can be considered a showstoper would be the "brand" apps, as gmail, youtube and the google play store.

Re:Google is evil

[Maho Shoujo]

I stopped posting for a few months because i was being stalked by APK anyway, then I forgot the password and I've changed email addresses since then.

Re:Microsoftesque?

[DragonWriter]

You do know Android is free, right?

Android is not free (that is, you actually do have to give something up to be an Android licensee, even if its not a cash payment -- the terms are not, AFAIK, publicly disclosed, though.)

Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code is free (subject to open source license terms, but those generally are restrictions on rights you wouldn't have without the license anyway, so you aren't giving anything up, just not getting everything possible under the sun.) But AOSP is not Android, even though Android is built on top of AOSP code.

Re:Microsoftesque?

[sexconker]

No, because Android is free, and Google doesn't work with most OEMs. They only work with a very, very few OEMs, and only on one or two devices. Motorola Xoom, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7, etc... those are the devices Google worked with OEMs on. Asus Transformer, Sony Xperia, Galaxy SIII - Google didn't do shit for those devices. Google hasn't worked with Acer on any devices so far - the relationship between those two seems weak at best.

This sounds like a blame game by Alibaba. Google has certainly not blocked "forks" or skins of Android, why would they try and block a completely different OS? Samsung makes WP7 phones, for example. Google hasn't tried blocking Amazon's Fire in any way.

Android is no longer truly open source.
The latest major version of Android is always closed source and it is only showed to a select few OEMs - the OEMs who play by Google's rules and install all the Google-branded apps by default. If you're not in that club your latest device will be releasing with 4.3 Powdery Tart when the "flagship" products from other OEMs are releasing with 4.4.2 Flaky Strudel, dooming your products to perpetual obsolescence,

Re:Google is evil

[Applekid]

This just establishes the fact that Google is not necessarily evil.

FTFY

Aliyun (alien?) is clearly written in code lifted from Android without Google's permission. While Android sources are available, that doesn't mean you can just take the source, change it as you see fit and sell it as your own. Pretty shoddy of Acer.

What I don't understand is how Aliyun can even sell it. Not the mechanism by which they get money in exchange for some code, but how anyone would willingly pay these people for something they can get for free. What exactly is Aliyun adding to the Android base that isn't already there?