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Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

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Re: Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

#21
post #20
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's interest lately is to conduct a kind psyops campaign against Google. They seem to have identified that a huge problem for them is that people really like Google a lot . So basically their strategy is to throw mud at Google until people don't trust them or like them any more. So I would say this fits into their campaign very neatly - if they can portray Google as stealing technology from other companies th…

I doubt that their amicus briefs are driven by PR considerations as opposed to actual business concerns. How does a court filing that most of the public will never see help them shift public perceptions of Google?

Obviously the public are not going to read the court filing, the judges will. And if the court accepts an appeal there will be years of bad PR for Google as the world discusses how and whether Google "stole" the APIs for Android. Even if Google is cleared there will still be smear on their name from people perceiving that they are profiting from something they didn't really make themselves.

Re: Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

#22
post #18

If anytime I have to use a 'managed' language, I go for python and haskell. Though, most of the time, I work on my video game renderer engine in evergreen C/C++ , I am quite satisfied and productive :) There is no use of C#, Java or VB for my work, and for good reasons ;)

So you as the sole developer have decided that python and haskell are good for you.

Well I am convinced.

Sure, you aren't dealing with 30 year old databases. Or 100s of developers with millions of code. But that shouldn't matter.

Re: Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

#23
post #18

If anytime I have to use a 'managed' language, I go for python and haskell. Though, most of the time, I work on my video game renderer engine in evergreen C/C++ , I am quite satisfied and productive :) There is no use of C#, Java or VB for my work, and for good reasons ;)

So you as the sole developer have decided that python and haskell are good for you. Well I am convinced. Sure, you aren't dealing with 30 year old databases. Or 100s of developers with millions of code. But that shouldn't matter.

The original post was off-topic and useless. There's no need to draw the entire conversation off-topic.

Re: Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

#24
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is not a software company. Google is an advertising company that uses (massively intelligent) software.

This is a common refrain, sometimes used as a slight, as if Google is just another Don Draper firm, that just happens to have some tech in its portfolio. As a rank-and-file Googler, my personal experience is that most Google engineers perceive that we are a technology company and advertising is often off in the edges of their mind. Yes, advertising is the majority revenue product, but like many startups, the people w…

they don't start out thinking, for example, "How can I increase ad revenue by making voice recognition better."

No offense, yet ad revenue magically it increase quarter after quarter after quarter. Surprise?

FYI: You are an ad company, a cutthroat and an annoying one too (I am about to use adblock.)

Yes, advertising is the majority revenue product

Consider the "moonshots" as HR advertising and to get Google press. Virtually all your earnings are because you twist things to get people to click on those expensive and annoying ads and you also buy politicians. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Have you mined those asteroids yet? Sure got a lot of press out of it

Re: Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

#25
post #3

kind of ridiculous that this even makes to court in the first place.... edit: Does anyone know much about the precedence (in court rulings) of ownership of programming languages?

I think you would have to separate out the different aspects of implementation, syntax and publicity into things that could be patented, copyrighted or trademarked.

You could look at Loglan vs Logban for strongly related issues on what you can and can not copyright in language in general.

Re: Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

#26
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guessing only: MS is a software company so they'd want to make it harder for others to copy (like whatever Google supposedly copied from java.) This, of course, is business for all involved, nothing personal.

> Guessing only: MS is a software company so they'd want to make it harder for others to copy (like whatever Google supposedly copied from java.) The guess can be a little more specific: Microsoft saw what the verdict said about Java and was concerned for what it meant for C#. Oracle having less control over Java because languages are not copyrightable means Microsoft has less control over C#. C# is important to Micr…

> The guess can be a little more specific: Microsoft saw what the verdict said about Java and was concerned for what it meant for C#. Oracle having less control over Java because languages are not copyrightable means Microsoft has less control over C#.

> C# is important to Microsoft, so it's going to make an effort to maintain full control over it.

C# is ECMA standard.

Re: Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

#27
post #14
post #12

I guess they dont understand why they lost in court with Sun and why Google did not with Oracle. And an android legal "takedown" would be very beneficial to MSFT ,since they try to sell phoneOS too.

Microsoft had licensed Java code under a trade agreement and was found to have violated the terms of that trade agreement. Google had not licensed Java code, and was sued under patent law. Totally different kind of case.

Oracle made both patent and copyright claims against Google. The patent claims were pretty bog-standard, but the copyright claim (the loss of which is what Oracle is appealing) was quite... novel.

Re: Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

#28
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is not a software company. Google is an advertising company that uses (massively intelligent) software.

This is a common refrain, sometimes used as a slight, as if Google is just another Don Draper firm, that just happens to have some tech in its portfolio. As a rank-and-file Googler, my personal experience is that most Google engineers perceive that we are a technology company and advertising is often off in the edges of their mind. Yes, advertising is the majority revenue product, but like many startups, the people w…

I love Google, but let's be honest. A company's source of revenue (and what it does with that revenue) determines what it is.

Re: Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common refrain, sometimes used as a slight, as if Google is just another Don Draper firm, that just happens to have some tech in its portfolio. As a rank-and-file Googler, my personal experience is that most Google engineers perceive that we are a technology company and advertising is often off in the edges of their mind. Yes, advertising is the majority revenue product, but like many startups, the people w…

they don't start out thinking, for example, "How can I increase ad revenue by making voice recognition better." No offense, yet ad revenue magically it increase quarter after quarter after quarter. Surprise? FYI: You are an ad company, a cutthroat and an annoying one too (I am about to use adblock.) Yes, advertising is the majority revenue product Consider the "moonshots" as HR advertising and to get Google press. Vi…

When you find a way to hire 10,000 top engineers and scientists and put them to work on exciting web services with a decent salary (deployed on the most scaleable and power efficient datacenters out there), much of which, the average person loves to use, but won't pay for, and without using tax dollars or scraping by on donations, let me know, I've love to do a start up with you. Did you pay for Netscape when they used to charge money?

I assure you, revenue doesn't increase magically quarter by quarter, in case you haven't noticed, when Google started out, most of the population still wasn't online yet, and most advertising dollars were spent in print and video media. Most of the meteoric rise can be traced simply to growth in the online audience and a switch-over from print to digital, not somehow arm twisting someone to click on an ad, if anything, people are induced to click on ads by making them less annoying and more relevant, otherwise, they 'mentally adblock' them.

You can believe what you want about motives, I only know what I experience everyday as far as others I know -- we like working on interesting or hard problems, just like any collection of geeky engineers and scientists. That I get paid to do what I'm passionate about, I personally feel grateful and lucky.

Re: Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

#30
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's a little strange, since Google is also a software company.

Google is not a software company. Google is an advertising company that uses (massively intelligent) software.

Would you call NBC an advertising company? Probably not. And yet their revenue comes almost entirely from ads as well.
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