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I don't know if it would've been any different for Solaris, but I can imagine Google would've been a whole lot better off owning Java. They probably would've be

I don't know if it would've been any different for Solaris, but I can imagine Google would've been a whole lot better off owning Java. They probably would've been far better stewards too. Even if they win Oracle v Google, it's been a huge distraction, a huge cost in lawyers (who knows how much they'll recoup), a big unknown and the search for an alternative has to be costly and time-consuming. $8.3 billion almost seems like a bargain in hindsight.

kpil 9y ago
To be fair I don't think that Oracle have been particularly bad to Java, except beeing Oracle. I doubt Google was ever an alternative. Realistically it was a fight for power over the enterprise customers between IBM and Oracle, with most (non OS) products built or integrated with Java. Maybe it was even a hot potato- someone needed to keep their strategic bet alive, since Microsoft also share the same strategy in the enterprise app segment. (Sell complex but underperforming applications to ill-advised customers using long feature lists.)