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Comment by blisterpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

From the article: "Neither the Moto G nor Moto X are sold in China, a result of the Chinese government's ban on Google services, which flow into its phones."

I don't understand this statement. All Android phones can have Google services; just add your google account in the settings. Is this feature disabled on Chinese Android phones?

It seems like China would be a natural market for such an inexpensive handset from a well known maker.

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I don't know the Chinese market, but I do know that there are Chinese forks of Android that swap Google search out for local competitors. A quick Google search shows Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba all have Android forks.

Then again, MIUI is popular there, and I think that retains Google Search compatibility, so there Google ban seems to be more nuanced. Perhaps it's simply that Google-owned companies don't do business in China proper because they don't want to data-share with the Chinese government, so Motorola can't formerly enter that market (and Chinese Android phones use Hong Kong datacenters).

Google's "Apps for Android" are not part of Android, but a propritary software suite. That the Chinese government banned Google services means companies making an android-based operating systems are not allowed to license Google's app suite. So in the final OS there is no way to add your Google account. The feature is not "disabled", it is simply not part of the software.

Google Play is blocked at the national firewall level in China, along with Google+ and Docs. And no doubt other services.

Android phones in China use a fork of AOSP which doesn't have Google services.

This is a good thing, look at 4.4, it's horrible with Google+ and Hangouts replacing SMS...

You're free to download whatever MMS app you want from Google Play.

Are you free to delete the Google apps? No, they're protected by the system. You have to be root to remove them.

You're perfectly free to disable them, which accomplishes the same thing as far as the user is concerned. The fact that the /system partition is mounted read-only for security and ease of system updates means you can't really delete them, but it also means you can't use that space anyway, so the ability to delete wouldn't be useful.

I read it as the Chinese government has banned Google services. Since Google phones have the services baked in the phones are also banned.

There are already tons of cheap android phones in China. With Chinese brands trying to become a well known maker.

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