When Apple asks a favor, people listen--even if those people happen to run Google and are getting ready to launch an iPhone competitor. Venture Beat is reporting that, as Google was designing Android, Apple requested that the company not include that old iPhone favorite, multi-touch, in the open-source mobile OS. And as anyone with a T-Mobile G1 can guess, Google agreed.

Android team members, for their part, are seemingly satisfied with the agreement for two reasons. First, it staves off a potentially litigious Apple, which owns numerous patents and has been known in the past to be quick to sue. (This fact has recently been getting a good amount of attention, in light of some less-than-kind words traded between the company and Palm--the manufacturers of the upcoming Pre smartphone.)

Also, and perhaps even more important, Apple and Google have long shared a friendly relationship based both on a mutual respect for each other and a shared dislike for Microsoft. Even as Google has gotten into the smartphone business in its own roundabout way, the company has continued to develop software for Apple's iPhone.

Of course, we do know that Android has mult-touch capabilities, which would come in handy--particularly with apps like Google Maps. So the question is, how much longer can friendship win out?