Google: Android 'a club' to make phone makers do what the company wants

As part of the ongoing dispute between Skyhook and Google, internal emails from the latter company have come to light that appear to show Google’s Open Source and Compatibility manager describing Android not as a welcoming party, where everything is permitted, but as ‘a club’ to force phone makers to do what Google want them to do.

Skyhook is currently engaged in a legal case surrounding the reasons why Motorola dropped support for the company’s location-based software, with the latest emails released by the Massachusetts state court suggesting it was due to Google threatening the company with withholding the supposedly open-source platform should it keep using non-Google authorised software.

Google’s lawyers, however, have called the company’s claims of anti-competitiveness ‘baseless’.

The case is ongoing, but the latest revelations don’t exactly paint a positive picture for a firm that has talked up Android’s open-source nature in the past.

New York Times [via Electric Pig]