A fight inside Silicon Valley is not something new. Things like this happen all the time. Sometimes even to bring hype and enjoy the excitement around. It gives your company a public attention and endorsement. Believe me, it actually works in a lot of occasions. But, most of the time, it is all about showing others what you’re capable of, to try to hold on to that thing which gives you an edge over the others and above all, it is after all the money the tech giants are in look out for.
A decade or two ago, who would’ve believed that there would a portable digital music player? Who would’ve atleast thought that people could go as down as trying to patent even features like design, cover and screws?! At a time like this, given the mentality of the big corporates, you shouldn’t really be taken aback for what is happening right now – so much called to be one of the most epic battles of all time – Google vs. Oracle.
It all happens at the United States District Court of North California. Lucky in one way, not just for the reason that it has hosted the case between two most influential companies of the IT industry, but also that it has seen all but a few leaders and management of both the companies as witnesses in the past few months. Shouldn’t be shocking if you happen to know that the judge William Alsup and the jury that presided over the case were speed dials on Larry Ellison’s and Larry Page’s phones.
Latest twist to the tale is that Google has claimed $4 million from Oracle to cover the costs that it had incurred during the lawsuit case. But, what really happened? Why does Google want the money? Something to do with Android right?! And yes, Java of course! Well, yHmmmHHou’ve read the title!
Way back in 1995 was when Sun Microsystems had introduced Java largely developed by James Gosling. Aim was to create a language as powerful as C++ that can run in every platform, device and literally everywhere possible. Just as they imagined, Java was a huge ‘Click’ among the users and developers. Sun had open sourced it by November 2006 under GPL v2, exactly a year after the acquisition of Android Inc., by Google.
By 2007 or so, Google unveiled the Android mobile distribution platform which aimed at creating a new ecosystem of smartphones, largely dependent on the community of developers and users. And there lies the problem exactly. Oracle claims that few pieces of code that Google used in Android operating system were actually copied from its Java Virtual Machine. As a matter of fact, it is actually true.
Problem is that Oracle acquired Sun only by 2010. But, Google had developed its Android like almost three years back in 2007, during the time of which, it had received huge support from Sun, which described the Google’s move something similar to fitting of rockets to the Java vehicle – something that would accelerate the growth of the language and told that this move of Google’s is a big boost to the worldwide community of Java developers and in fact gave them a recognition.
And now, Oracle is fuming angrily over copying of few certain lines of code from Java. Shortly after the Sun acquisition was complete, Oracle sued Google with a copyright infringement complaint that they had illegally copied/cloned 37 APIs used in Java to build the Android. Google put forward its side of argument that they had actually copied the code only because the content was licensed under GPL v2 that provided rights for re use of the existing code. But, seems like that code or more appropriately the APIs of Java were patented before – Think of the trouble and the pain that people would’ve taken to explain what an API can do to a bunch of law graduates who might not even know where the shutdown button is! Phew!!
Jury finally concluded that Google had indeed copied the code from Java but considered it as relatively minor breach of law and that it can’t be sued for what has happened – leaving nothing but blank and empty faces at Oracle’s lawyers and management.
And now comes the $4 million bill that Google has put up to Oracle for the money that it had spent in arranging for the lawsuit claims. What remains to be seen is what Alsup is going to do.