When this was brought to our attention, the sad truth is that we weren’t really all that surprised by it. For one, it’s not like this is the first time that China and Google have been in the news together recently, so something like this almost seems natural, if not a direct response to those past events. But, is that really even the reason? Should we really be upset that Motorola has chosen to use Microsoft’s Bing as its primary search engine in China?
According to Reuters, this could very well be the reason. It’s a sad truth that politics can come between a great many things, and if this situation is indeed the case, then chalk this one up as another loss. And while many think that an Android-based device isn’t an Android-based device if it’s lacking such distinct features as (Google) search and (Google) maps, that’s simply not the case. No matter how you look at it, the Android mobile Operating System is planted firmly in the open source market. Meaning, once someone decides that they want to use Android on their device, it’s fair game.
We’ve seen such travesties before, naturally. Sure, it doesn’t help Motorola’s case that the last great debacle featuring a missing Google feature happened on another one of their devices, but this just seems to be a case of freedom of choice. The manufacturing company has decided to stake their claim in an open project, and by the result of that, can do whatever they want with the platform once it makes it onto their hardware. (Let’s not forget that AT&T is more than likely also very much to blame for the Yahoo! Search on the Motorola Backflip, the other handset in question.) As much as we all expect, or even need our Google-centric applications on Android devices, the nature of the beast is far more robust, and has a lot more options.
