Alibaba Browser Deleted After Misleading Ad Claims

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s mobile internet browser UC Browser has been removed from several mobile application stores in China as a feud between the company and China's government escalates.

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and Xiaomi Communications Co. Ltd. smartphone users in China confirmed the application was no longer available in their stores. However, the application is still available on some Android mobile app stores, including Samsung Group.

Xiaomi and Huawei may have manually removed the app from their stores. Alibaba's UC Browser is still available on Apple's App Store.

UC Browser was publicly criticized on a TV show aired by state-owned China Central TV. The browser was accused of misleading online medical advertising by allowing private hospitals to outbid government-run medical facilities.

Alibaba allowed private companies to bid for the names of some of China's best-known public hospitals for keyword searches and patients were led to thinking they were visiting public hospital websites, the show said.

Alibaba said it was making changes. "We attach high importance to problems shown in the show and quickly conducted a series of measures to check and correct. We will further enhance content review and shoulder more responsibility, and provide good info services with stricter standards," a representative for Alibaba's UC Browser team said in a statement.

The representative said the team had already removed all "illegal ad content."

China President Xi Jinping reiterated his decision to crack down on unfair practices by large technology companies. He said some companies were continuing to operate outside of regulatory standards - which posed a serious risk to industry.