I'm having flashbacks here, but what I remember at that time was concern that if Google paid Sun, they'd be setting a precedent that way. There was a sigh of re

I'm having flashbacks here, but what I remember at that time was concern that if Google paid Sun, they'd be setting a precedent that way. There was a sigh of relief when they didn't, at least from some, because, regardless of how much better of a company Sun was than post-Sun Oracle, people felt like it was overreaching. So although you're correct that Google did this themselves, the alternative was fraught with problems also. Better to fight it and lose than implicitly accept the idea and pay. This was all happening in the context of C#, which people seem to be forgetting about too. It's important to remember that the whole idea of copyrightable API was done under the argument that it was important to protect API integrity from forks. MS provided evidence of a desire to do this (as has Google to some extent since then) but then introduced C# instead. Anyway, this is a mess because copyrightable API is ridiculous, but Google should have been more careful with cleanroom implementations.