That's a pretty extreme example and really more of a Google vs carrier battle than a Google vs Asus battle. Aliyun was trying to establish a Play competitor and lock Google out--you can't expect Google to play along. Since Honeycomb Google's been pretty strong relative to manufacturers. The biggest pre-Honeycomb threat was Motorola that was thrashing to cut Google out and get back in control (Skyhook, BlurOS) and... well you can see how the constellations happened to align there. What Google was threatening to yank wasn't access to Android, but access to the Platform Development Kit and possibly unannounced Nexus projects--i.e. access to the pre-Open Source drops. Someone like Amazon can pull that off because they don't care, but certainly Asus doesn't have the muscle. Asus was free to choose Aliyun or Google, it's not Asus's fault that Aliyun isn't as valuable.

> but access to the Platform Development Kit and possibly unannounced Nexus projects--i.e. access to the pre-Open Source drops

As far as I understand, it also meant access to all google services for all acer (not asus, my mistake) smartphones. So it's an ultimatum after all.

Acer

I should proofread my comments better, acer indeed.