Google allegedly told Acer to drop a rival phone, or lose Android partnership

[Graham]

Also consider that the evidence is building for rampant piracy stocking the Aliyun app store:

http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09...r-pirate-site/

Aliyun's app store appeared to be distributing Android apps scraped from the Play Store and other websites, not only downloadable to Aliyun devices as .apk files, but also provided by third parties not involved with the apps' or games' development. What's more, we've received independent confirmation from the original developers of some of these apps that they did not in fact give consent for their products to be distributed in Aliyun's app store.

In this post, we'll take a quick look at some of the evidence that Aliyun is illegally distributing apps, our confirmation from developers, and what this could mean for Android, Aliyun, and piracy in general.

The apps available include Google apps which were certainly not provided by Google themselves.

The overall point here is that, despite the probable persistence of piracy, Google's response to Acer's proposed union with Aliyun is completely understandable – while Google may not be able to quash piracy once and for all, it recognizes that turning a blind eye while an Open Handset Alliance member releases a platform that copies Android and steals from its app and developer ecosystem is not a good starting place.

Spyke

[Andrew H.]

It always raises questions when a company with a dominant market share threatens to withhold access to its product because a company is making an alliance with another company. In certain cases, this is the quintessential example of anti-competitive behavior. If MS told computer makers that they couldn't install windows in their computers if they also manufactured Android phones, for example, there would be no question about the illegality of this. It doesn't matter whether you describe Acer, Asus, etc. as "partners" or not.

Having said that, though, that doesn't appear to be quite what's going on here. Except in this case, Google has freely permitted manufacturers using Android to also use other OSes. Although I'm sure it wasn't thrilled by the experience, it didn't object to Amazon's KFs, either. All of this suggests that Google is more concerned about something other than quashing competitors.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

If MS told computer makers that they couldn't install windows in their computers if they also manufactured Android phones, for example, there would be no question about the illegality of this. It doesn't matter whether you describe Acer, Asus, etc. as "partners" or not.

Isn't that how MS handled DOS on early PCs, though? If you made it and it didn't have a 68k processor, it *had* to come with MS-DOS? Nobody batted an eyelid at it, either.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Although I'm sure it wasn't thrilled by the experience, it didn't object to Amazon's KFs, either.

If Amazon haven't signed a license to use Google's proprietary apps, Google have no opportunity to object, whether they would like to or not.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by teh603

Isn't that how MS handled DOS on early PCs, though? If you made it and it didn't have a 68k processor, it *had* to come with MS-DOS? Nobody batted an eyelid at it, either.

No, it wasn't.
MS sold MS DOS under two different types of OEM contracts.
OEMs could choose to keep precise track of how many PCs they installed MS DOS on and pay for the licenses on a per unit basis, or they could designate specific PC models as MS DOS computers and pay a license fee for each unit they shipped of that model. The volume discount for the latter was much lower than the former so most OEMs chose to go with it. (Any models that were designated for alternate OS installs did not pay a DOS license fee. Most PC manufacturers just didn't bother to make alternate-OS PCs.)
The FTC looked into complaints of this back in the late 80's and cleared MS; mostly because the idea came from the OEMs--they didn't want the added tracking expense when MS DOS was almost 100% of their business at the time. DR-DOS was actually a distant third behind even XENIX.
The same thing with all the PCs that came with Office preinstalled--the idea came from Gateway2000, not Microsoft.

[TomyHartley]

Originally Posted by afv011

There's a good analysis here.

yes it's a really good analyse