Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft sides with Oracle against Google in Java appeal

newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com

64 pointssnydeq55 comments

This article is trying to make hay out of various tech wars because it makes a nice narrative, but the key here is

A copy of Microsoft's legal brief was not immediately available on the Federal Circuit's docket.

All we know is that they filed a friend of the court brief. Oracle's appeal has a fairly diverse[1] spread of approaches to copyright and APIs in an attempt to make their case. Microsoft's brief could be equally sprawling or limited to a single aspect of Oracle's claims. We won't know until we can actually read it.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/on-appeal-oracle-...

Does Microsoft actually have a vested interest specifically in the use of Java by Google, such as being upset that Google had free use of the Java APIs while itself was scolded for implementing their own JVM?

Or is it basically "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"?

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 then they can keep piecing together this picture of "bad Google" that they want everyone to see.

If this is their plan, I think it's a terrible one. All they're really doing is reinforcing their image as a patent troll. This will only strengthen Google's position as the "good guy" as it is very easy to simply see this case as freedom and innovation vs. corporate greed.

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.

They likely want APIs to be copywritable.

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 Microsoft, so it's going to make an effort to maintain full control over it.

Which would be bad for all of us should Oracle and Microsoft prevail. Java and C# are widely-used, and the kind of control Oracle and Microsoft want over them is excessive.

> 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.

It sounds like part of the issue might be the copyrighting of APIs, not the language.

This seems more plausible. I'd guess they are strongly against emulating Windows API system calls in projects like reactos or wine.

Actually, I think that there are both benefits and costs to tightly controlled languages, and it's not clear at all that the costs outweigh the benefits. Indeed, arguably C#'s great progress in the last decade compared to Java is due in large part to Microsoft's hegemony as opposed to Java's community process.

Regardless, as I understand it (though IANAL) Oracle's copyright argument was over Android's reuse of Java's APIs (including signatures and documentation), not over the Java language itself. Basically they claimed that just like a cookbook is subject to copyright even though an individual recipe may not be, so should the collected Java API be even though individual method signatures wouldn't be.

My response to the cookbook analogy would be that Oracle shouldn't be granted a copyright on the API because that gives them effective ownership over the code everyone else writes to interface with that API.

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.

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 working on moonshots are not thinking about the business model, they are thinking about the problem to be solved. When most people go work on a 20% project, some of which become top Google services, they don't start out thinking, for example, "How can I increase ad revenue by making voice recognition better."

Oh don't worry, that's exactly what Google wants you to think

"Look, another pool in the office"

I'm not saying it's bad.

"the people working on moonshots are not thinking about the business model, they are thinking about the problem to be solved"

And this is why Google is good at what it does. I would do the same. Each employee should focus on their own strengths.

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.

The vast majority of all web businesses founded since the dot com era have had ads as their business model, because of either, failure to get a universal, easy to use, micropayment system standardized at the start of the Web, or because people came to experience surfing to be transaction-cost free, most people are unwilling to pay for web services, and if you think ads are annoying, how annoying is signing up for an account, inputting your credit card, and buying a service?

It would be nice if people would pay for newspapers, blogs, Search, email, Facebook, et al, and in some cases, in Apple iOS, people seem culturally prone to pay, but for the most part, attempts at pay walls have failed.

My only point is, if you focus only on the revenue source, you fail to differentiate between what the businesses actually do. If a school were to be funded by billboards on school buses, would you say it's an elementary school, or an advertising company?

If the source of revenue actually drives what the company uses that revenue for, I think you have a point, I think it is arguable that Google reinvests most of profits in ads. If you look at Android or Chrome, they are both large projects, that did not start out to generate ad revenue, but both to improve mobile and the web, and to build a defensive moat that would prevent a competitor from controlling the on-ramps. Indeed, it seems Apple iOS generates far more ad revenue, so getting people to use Android actually reduces ad revenue. :)

If you look at Android or Chrome, they are both large projects, that did not start out to generate ad revenue, but both to improve mobile and the web, and to build a defensive moat that would prevent a competitor from controlling the on-ramps

How sweet of you, must be the coolaid :). Google controls what % of mobile advertising? Where would that be without Android and the many Google Apps that come as a package? Defensive moat or trying to get more ad dollars by learning location, habits and everything else?

Google's business model: Show mostly, to almost all ads to people searching for information that can be monetized. You went from 1 ad on the right to 5 on top, 10 on sides, 2 on the bottom and then another 10 Google pages. That ad money is being passed as price increase to consumers. Enjoy your monopoly, but you will be disrupted.

You clearly don't understand Google.

They earn over 95% of their revenue from SELLING advertising. The other parts of their business e.g. search, mail, maps consume advertising like other web businesses. You are trying to equate the selling from the consumption which is illogical.

Search, mail and maps consume advertising in the same way that newspaper and magazine articles do. Or Facebook pages, or TV series.

Roger Federer earns 85% of his revenue from advertising[1]. Other parts of his business (tennis playing) consumes advertising (displaying Nike logos on his clothes).

What is the insight here? This tells something about how our economy works. It doesn't tell us much about the New York Times, Facebook, NBC, Roger Federer and Google. If you want to understand a company, you cannot limit yourself to a look at the sources of revenue. You have to go deeper and ask what makes it successful. Good newspaper articles. Good tennis play. Good web services and an open platform for mobile devices.

[1] http://spakovas.blogspot.com/2012/06/top-10-highest-earning-...

Is Apple a phone carrier not a consumer electronics company, since a huge chunk of their revenues come from carrier subsidies that lock consumers into multiyear contracts that obfuscate the true costs (e.g. $2200)?

Google is spending so much of its revenue on other ideas like Glasses and self-driving cars, not for PR purposes, although it does garner positive PR, but because getting 95% of you revenue from a single source is risky in the long term, and they are obviously trying to diversify.

If you want to describe Google as an advertising company, go ahead, but that is a grossly under-descriptive term of what the company truly does, as poor a description as calling Amazon just a retail store.

Yup, but you could say that for many IT companies. Why? Because most of them are getting money by utilizing advertising in one form or another. Is Twitter an advertising company? Is Facebook?

>Is Twitter an advertising company? Is Facebook?

Are these serious questions? Of course they are. What else?

I'm questioning the need to constantly repeat the obvious. Just about every thread that smells of Google gets derailed by meta conversation about advertising.

For what is worth, I still consider these companies to be heavily tech oriented, despite their source of revenue. They give bread and butter to people like me - developers. Whereas your run-of-the-mill traditional advertising company doesn't.

banks are very heavily tech oriented (as in they use a lot of tech and also make their own tech). and yet you won't call a bank a tech orient ed company because a company's model determines the 'orientation', not what sort of tools they use.

many people agree that Google is an advert company. it just that they are different from the traditional Madison avenue style ad company. no one is saying that being an ad company is bad. nor are they disallowed to invest in tech. but they are not like the old research institute like the old palo alto xerox style company.

This is a fine way to think about companies that aren't taking a slice of transactions in a market.

For instance, Tesla is a car company. They make cars and sell them. Dropbox is an online storage service. You pay them to hold on to your stuff.

But what kind of company is the New York Stock Exchange? Is it a stock company because equities are traded on the market that it provides? I wouldn't describe it that way.

Google is closer to a marketplace than most people realize. One of the most generic marketplaces ever built. It connects people looking for information with the information they seek. They take a cut from transactions where the information wanted relates to a commercial product.

So it's not really appropriate to call Google an advertising company. They are a market maker for the world's information.

>So it's not really appropriate to call Google an advertising company. They are a market maker for the world's information.

Sure. If you completely ignore the breakdowns in Google's revenue.

It's akin to saying Apple is a music label because you decide to emphasis the small parts of their business ahead of the parts that are actually responsible for the bulk of their revenue.

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

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.

>if anything, people are induced to click on ads by making them less annoying and more relevant, otherwise, they 'mentally adblock' them.

or by disguising ads as a legitimate part of the page so that users click them by mistake, often leading people to download malware. Just about every software download page on the internet that has ads is full of Google served ads that lead to malware.

This is what Google has turned the web into for people that don't use adblock: http://i.imgur.com/0vPdDYU.png

People have complained about this for years. Maybe doing some OCR on the ads you serve to filter out big fake 'Download' buttons isn't enough of an "interesting or hard problem" for you super-geniuses to waste your time on.

"Most of the meteoric rise can be traced simply to growth in the online audience and a switch-over from print to digital"

Until 2007 maybe, but now you're 85%-100% ads on all commercial topics and most users probably don't realize it yet. Face it, that's the truth. Enjoy your paycheck and stock grants but there's nothing to feel proud about your company. Every time business owners growl about less traffic and penalties from "unbiased Google", magically Google's revenue grow by another 30%.

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

Hard problems...like intercepting user intent and not sending them to sites but to Adwords links? That's what your real boss, Nikesh Arora said during his conference call. Or making the background as close to white and hide the ad disclaimers as possible?

You sound Carmela Soprano "I'm just a housewife, cooking for my husband, I don't know where the money to support me comes from."

Or making the background as close to white and hide the ad disclaimers as possible?

The background actually becomes white at even slight vertical angles on cheap laptop LCDs; it seems to have been selected just for that purpose.

Oh snap!

So what you are saying is that Google is a talented and large advertising company.

> you also buy politicians

Citations please!

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

It depends on perspective.

Are commercials annoying bits between the program segments you want to watch?

Or are programs there to persuade you not to switch channels when the commercials come on?

obviously the story is different on HBO, Showtime etc., and on BBC in the UK

My two cents. I worked for a few months in a local social network, a fairly-sized one by the way (second-only to facebook in traffic in our country). The engineers thought about the company as technology-based, and our work certainly was to develop such technology; we were the bread and butter of the staff, which means that most of the company's workforce was devoted to create software. As for managers and such, they only talked about advertising whenever revenue was directly involved in the discussion, but usually that wasn't the case despite it being our basic source of money, since we were already an established company without funding problems. Most of the time they took the revenue for granted, and the guidelines they gave us were not about ad visibility and such, but about user experience, increasing the time they spent on our site, etc. So, basically, there was a big separation between what we did and where we got the money from. I think that a company is far better defined from the former than the latter, and I'm inclined to think that people in google think the same, even the non-technical staff.

so your managers have figured out that the best way to sustain ad revenue is to make a product that people enjoy using. that's why the focus is poon user experience and not on add visibility. making ads more visible or numerous is a short term gain but a long term loss. Google is doing exactly the same.

Google's bread and butter (Adwords, Search algorithms and related data) are not installed on 90% of the world's PCs, they're guarded as trade secrets. Android, Chrome and the rest only feed data and users to what is a secret. They're free and "open" to encourage adoption and by extension get more ads served, increase ad relevancy and as a bonus try to ruin Apple's and MSFT's business.

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.

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.

As a good in my opinion (but unfortunatelly improbable) move from Google, will be to switch from Java to Haxe in next versions, because it compiles both to native Android and to Java and looks similar to Java, on the first view.

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.

I find it pretty sad that Microsoft are lowering themselves to trying to kill competition through lawsuits, lobbying for anti-trust, and paying for hate and FUD campaigns against them lately. On the other hand all this stuff is not exactly strange to Microsoft. Just continuing the legacy.

Microsoft was on the receiving end of a lot of these kinds of campaigns as well, so you can hardly blame them.

Considering where .Net and C# came from (as in heavily, heavily, heavily influenced by) and we have to forget those pictures of Bill Gates chumming around with then President Clinton riding around in golf carts; it seems clear why Microsoft would take the stance they did..."Android is the best-selling smartphone operating system around the world.".

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