Google Dumped From Chinese Smartphones

China's second-biggest cell phone operator—apparently bowing to pressure from Beijing—has announced that Google search won't be available on the Android smartphones it developed in partnership with Google. "We are willing to work with any company that abides by Chinese law ," said the president of China Unicom. "We don’t have any cooperation with Google."

Google was, until recently, poised to take first place in China's rapidly growing mobile-search market. Unicom's boycott marks the first—but almost certainly not the last—major commercial hit Google has taken from its stance against censorship, the Financial Times notes. "If you were partnering with Google in China, your business plans have just fallen apart,” one industry analyst tells BusinessWeek. “You need to scramble and find new partners." (More Unicom stories.)