But apparently Google gets a free pass while Microsoft not, because "hey it's Google and they are sooo cool".Interesting indeed how the two cases are perceived differently. I wonder to what extent they really were similar, legally speaking. At least one important difference is that Microsoft did license Java from Sun. Microsoft was using the Java trademark and advertising J++ as "Java-compatible" although their implementation was not passing the compliance tests.
To go back to the perception of Microsoft and Google's actions by the community, I think it's not hard
to explain:
On one hand, you have Microsoft developing a proprietary Java product with the goal of undermining cross-platform Java and locking users and developers to the Windows platform. Remember the famous internal Microsoft email:
"We should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take more advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps."
On the other hand, there is Google using Java for the purpose of delivering an open-source operating system. They didn't license Java, but I think the perception is that one should not require a license to use a programming language and/or implement its standard libraries. And compared to Microsoft, the perception is that any Java incompatibily introduced by Google in Android is not malicious but due to technical decisions (be they good or bad).