Comment by jmyeet

I heard a story (unconfirmed) that at the time Oracle was buying Sun, it was pretty obvious that owning Java then suing people, most notably Google, was the whole point.

Google not buying Sun may go down as one of their poorest decisions. I mean rumor has it, Google offered $6 billion to buy GroupOn (which they turned down). If GroupOn is worth $6B (it isn't) then owning Java is worth $7.5B.

I suspect Google believed they had an implicit license from Sun to use Java on Android, otherwise this was a massive licensing failure. While Sun still existed, even buying a token license would've been cheap.

Now Google ultimately prevailed in their lawsuit setting an important precedent but at what cost? It was over a decade of uncertainty and cost who knows how much in legal fees. And while it was ongoing, Android was under a cloud and Google had to abandon a bunch of things it was otherwise doing with Java.

Oracle is just the worst.