Former Chinese partners shun Google

Google is poised to become a pariah in China as more of its business partners, feeling the heat from the government, are opting to break ties with the internet giant after its decision to stop censoring search results in China and shift its Chinese-language service to servers in Hong Kong.

China Unicom, the country's second-largest mobile operator said yesterday that it will stop using Google's Android operating system in its smartphones and will leave it to handset manufacturers to choose the search engines of their choice.

"We are willing to work with any company that abides by Chinese law... We don't have any cooperation with Google currently," the Financial Times quoted China Unicom president Lu Yimin as saying.

A few days after California-based company threatened to exit China following highly sophisticated and targeted cyber attacks originating from China that tried to peek into the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, (See: Google threatens to exit China after cyber attacks) 

Google delayed launching two handsets manufactured by Motorola and Samsung for China Unicom, using it's Android operating system. (See: Google delays launching mobile phones in China)

China's biggest mobile operator, China Mobile, is also expected to cancel a 2007 deal for using Google's search engine on its mobile internet home page.