Stefan Mileschin

Google has been accused of using its control of Android to do evil to its business partners and make them bow to its will.

According to SlashGear, Google threatened to cut Acer off from Android and forced it to cancel a phone collaboration with Alibaba.

Acer and Alibaba had been planning to launch the CloudMobile A800 smartphone but the event itself was suddenly shut down after Acer was apparently told that "Google would terminate Android product cooperation" if the phone was released.

Acer is saying nothing, but Alibaba is furious and not backward in coming forward.

It said in a statement that Acer received notification from Google that if the new product launch with Aliyun went ahead, Google would terminate Android product cooperation and related technical authorisation with Acer.

This is unusual as it is not the sort of behaviour that anyone has heard from Google before, at least officially.

What appeared to have got Google's goat was that Alibaba wanted to use its own operating system, Aliyan, which runs webapps based on Alibaba's own services. However, the OS can install Android apps.

Alibaba is not saying much more about it although the official company news site described Google's decision as "clearly unfair to consumers".

It said that by introducing the Aliyun OS it was giving consumers and hardware makers more options which is the foundation of a healthy and strong market.

The argument is that Google should have left it to the market to decide rather than its own executives.

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