Oracle sued Google in 2010 over copyright and patent infringement allegations for its use of the Java programming language in Android, now the world’s most popular mobile operating system. Oracle obtained the rights to Java when it acquired Sun Microsystems.
Google has said that under fair-use laws it didn’t need a license for the open-source software.
“We welcome the Supreme Court’s decision to review the case and we hope that the Court reaffirms the importance of software interoperability in American competitiveness,” said Kent Walker, Google’s senior vice president of global affairs, in an emailed statement on Friday. “Developers should be able to create applications across platforms and not be locked into one company’s software.”
Oracle, however, says fair use is no way to describe how Google tapped into Java.
“We believe the Court will reject any reasoning that permits copying verbatim vast amounts of software code, used for the same purpose and same way as the original,” said Oracle’s Deborah Hellinger in an emailed statement Friday. “That is not ‘transformative,’ and certainly not fair use.”
Originally published Nov. 15, 12:19 p.m. PT.Update, 12:46 p.m.: Adds comment from Oracle.
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An expanded Firefox search deal with Google helped push Mozilla’s annual revenue up 8 percent to $562 million for 2017 — money that should come in handy as the nonprofit tries to salvage what’s good about the internet.
“Privacy and security have been brought to the mainstream. We love that we can talk about these issues in a way that’s creating a lot more knowledge and understanding for the consumer,” said Chief Operating Officer Denelle Dixon.
Mozilla is using not just the Firefox web browser but increasingly other products, services and campaigns to try to help us online. “That’s our focus as we enter into in 2019,” she said.
Too bad Mozilla is arguably losing leverage just when we could use it the most.
Over the last year, the number of people using Firefox monthly has dipped from about 300 million to about 277 million, according to Mozilla’s own figures. Mozilla offers more technology than Firefox, but the browser is its best-known brand, most widely used product, and a key tool to get people to try things like Mozilla’s VPN service for network privacy, Lockbox tool for password management, and the Firefox Monitor tool to warn if you were affected by a data breach.
And Firefox trails Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari, too. Firefox usage slipped over the last year from 6 percent to 5 percent, according to analytics firm StatCounter, which measures how often browsers are used to view websites among its network. That’s third place to Google’s dominant Chrome browser at 62 percent and Apple’s Safari at 15 percent.
Firefox doesn’t need to dominate the internet. But it does need a strong enough presence to influence the development of standards so the web remains an openly developed platform, not just whatever works with Chrome.
Firefox-generated search revenue
The lion’s share of Mozilla’s revenue — $542 million, according to the 2017 tax reports it released Tuesday — comes from deals that send our queries in Firefox to search engines such as Google, Yandex and Baidu. An earlier deal with Yahoo ended in an as-yet unresolved lawsuit with its owner, Verizon. Mozilla is paid in proportion to the search traffic it sends to search sites, which make money by sometimes showing search ads alongside search results.
Mozilla’s 2017 revenue increased 8 percent to $562 million.
Stephen Shankland/CNET
Some of the increase in Mozilla’s 2017 revenue came because Mozilla signed a deal to get paid for Google search traffic in parts of Europe, Dixon said. “We generate a significant amount of revenue from outside the US,” she said, including from non-Google partners.
She declined to comment in detail on the Verizon lawsuit, which is in a preliminary data-discovery phase.
“We feel very good about our revenue from existing partners. We have anticipated not receiving any additional revenue from Yahoo as the litigation is pending,” Dixon said.
Mozilla has taken on Facebook, pulling its advertisements and offering a Firefox plugin that makes it harder for Facebook to track you online. But Mozilla’s search partners aren’t free from criticism, either, whether it’s Google tracking you online or wrestling with the idea of censored search results in China. Of course, you can always search in Firefox’s private-tab mode, which makes it harder for Google to profile you based on your search history.
Also in 2017, Mozilla paid $2.3 million to its chair, Mitchell Baker, a key executive since Mozilla’s early days. Mozilla’s total expenses increased from $361 million to $422 million.
Mozilla is branching out beyond Firefox, though only modestly at this stage. One example is its 2017 acquisition of Pocket, a service that lets you bookmark websites, save them for online or offline reading at your convenience, and more recently convert them into spoken words with AI text-to-speech technology. Pocket feeds recommendations — including sponsored posts — into the new-tab page in Firefox.
You can also subscribe to Pocket for ad-free usage. Mozilla garnered nearly $3 million in revenue from Pocket, Dixon said. Mozilla also disclosed that it paid $25 million in cash for Pocket plus $5 million in deferred payments. It might not be the last time Mozilla decides to expand through an acquisition, too.
“We’re constantly evaluating our options in building, buying and partnerships,” Dixon said. “I would hope to say Pocket is not our last acquisition.”
The 3:59 gives you bite-size news and analysis about the top stories of the day, brought to you by the CNET News team in New York and producer Bryan VanGelder.
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Google’s high-flying drone dreams may be dashed for now. Its parent company, Alphabet, has reportedly cut the Titan program, which Google first acquired in 2014.
Buying Titan Aerospace gave Google (in its pre-Alphabet days) access to high-altitude, solar-powered craft capable of beaming internet service to the developing world. The drones, which could fly at a height of 12 miles, were also to be tasked with collecting real-time images of the globe, as well as atmospheric data.
The team’s progress was apparently hobbled by a series of setbacks, including a crash in New Mexico related to wing problems.
The Titan team’s reported 50-odd employees will be dispersed into other teams within Alphabet, according to 9to5 Google. Assuming the drone effort is actually being disbanded, and not being absorbed into another project that also focuses on solar-powered flight, that leaves Facebook-owned Ascenta and its Aquila drone to pursue the Silicon Valley dream of operating high-altitude internet delivery.
Google’s press team (which also handles press for Alphabet) did not respond to a request for comment.
CNET Magazine: Check out a sampling of the stories you’ll find in CNET’s newsstand edition, right here.
Life, disrupted: In Europe, millions of refugees are still searching for a safe place to settle. Tech should be part of the solution. But is it? CNET investigates.
If you want to buy a phone that marries the HTC One M8’s slick new design with Google’s version of the Android interface, you can buy it right now — but you won’t get it immediately.
The Google Play version of the HTC One M8 is now for sale on the Google Play store in the US for a price of $699 (the link may not work outside the US). That’s an unlocked version that works on GSM networks such as those from AT&T and T-Mobile.
Handset makers such as Huawei, LG Electronics, Samsung, HTC, Sony, and Motorola all customize Android to different degrees with their own features and graphics, but a lot of people prefer Google’s Android flavor as cleaner and less bloated — and that’s updated more swiftly. That’s the OS that comes with the Nexus series of phones, and it’s what’s available on the Google Play variations of non-Nexus phones.
“The Google Play edition phones automatically receive updates of the latest Android software,” Google said on the site. They’re “Optimized for the latest apps, [offer] more storage for your content, and [have] a fast, clean user experience.”
There’s a wait for the Google Play version of the HTC One M8, though. The shipment time right now shows as two to three weeks.
A closer look at the HTC One M8’s features (pictures)
Ordinarily the HTC One comes with version six of the Taiwanese company’s Sense interface.
The HTC One M8 has a metal unibody enclosure, 5-inch 1,920×1,080 screen, 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, powerful front-facing speakers, 2GB of RAM, a microSD card slot, a 2,600 mAh battery, and either 16GB or 32GB of internal storage.
The new phone has drawn praise from the press — except for its hit-or-miss camera performance. It’s got an unusual two-lens main camera that’s got relatively low resolution at 4 megapixels but that offers depth-related effects like backgrounds that are blurred out or desaturated. Those features work on the Google Play version of the phone, Google said.
“Duo Camera features an Ultrapixel camera that is engineered with larger pixels to capture more light and a depth sensor to automatically measure the distance between objects,” Google said. “You can blur backgrounds and highlight your subject, change focus after you’ve taken your shot, and even add 3D-style dimension and depth.”
The Google Play edition of the HTC One M8 shown on sale at Google’s site.
screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET
The Oracle v. Google trial continued on day five with more detailed dissection of Java and APIs and the difference, or similarities, between Android and Java.
Google’s lawyers framed their questions to elicit responses to make the case that the Java language is free and open, and the 37 applications programming interfaces that Oracle contends Google violated are not subject to copyright. Oracle’s lawyers relentlessly pursued the line that Google knowingly ripped off restricted elements of Java to create Android.
In today’s testimony, Google’s attempts to license Java from Sun over several years was discussed. Google’s legal team trotted out a November 5, 2007 blog post from then Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz applauding the birth of Android, as if to show that Sun approved of Google’s use of Java, even though it was incompatible with Sun’s Java.
I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of others from Sun in offering my heartfelt congratulations to Google on the announcement of their new Java/Linux platform, Android. Congratulations!
I’d also like Sun to be the first platform software company to commit to a complete developer environment around the platform, as we throw Sun’s NetBeans developer platform for mobile devices behind the effort. We’ve obviously done a ton of work to support developers on all Java based platforms, and were pleased to add Google’s Android to the list.
And needless to say, Google and the Open Handset Alliance just strapped another set of rockets to the community’s momentum – and to the vision defining opportunity across our (and other) planets.
Today is an incredible day for the open source community, and a massive endorsement of two of the industry’s most prolific free software communities, Java and Linux.
“Anything that creates a more diverse or fractured platform is not in (developers’) best interests,” said Rich Green, executive vice president of Sun’s software, speaking to reporters at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. “The feedback from developers is, ‘Help us fix this.'”
He said Sun wants to work with Google to nip any problems in the bud. “We’re really interested in working with Google to make sure developers don’t end up with a fractured environment. We’re reaching out to Google and assuming they’ll be reaching out to us to ensure these platforms and APIs will be compatible so deployment on a wide variety of platforms will be possible,” Green said.
Google didn’t adopt a terribly conciliatory tone in its response, arguing that when it comes to Java fragmentation, Android is the solution, not the problem.
“Google and the other members of the Open Handset Alliance are working to help solve fragmentation and supporting the developer community by creating Android, a mobile platform that responds to the needs of the developers, has the backing of industry leaders, and will be available as open source under a nonrestrictive license,” Google said in a statement.
It appears that Sun’s CEO and its executive vice president of software were not exactly on the same page regarding Android. Or, it may be that Schwartz was optimistic that after years of on-and-off negotiations, Google and Sun could come to an agreement on an open handset platform that involved Java and Android.
Prior to Schwartz’s warm welcome for Android and Green’s expression of concern about Android, Google had been in talks to license Java. In a document in evidence from July 2005, Google outlined a wish list for an agreement with Sun.
Google would like to work with Sun to conceive of and agree to a license that enables Google to release to the Open Source community, under a license of it’s own choosing, it’s internally developed CLDC based JVM. Google would like to achieve this goal with Sun’s blessing and cooperation.
Google does not foresee the necessity to license or redistribute any software from Sun.
Google desires to be able to call the resulting work Java.
Google proposed that Android must pass the TCK (Technology Compatibility Kit) on reference design before release to the open-source community. OEM licensees would also have to pass the TCK and pay Sun a royalty on Java.
Google drafted a comprehensive proposal for partnering with Sun on an “open handset solution”:
Sun and Google jointly develop an open handset solution. Sun’s main responsibility is the Java cdc virtual machine, class libraries, MIDP stack and relevant JSRs. Google’s main responsibility is the OS, system framework, graphics, telephony, basic applications, data manager, codecs, protocol stacks, native tool chain, including debugger, bootloader, gee-based tools.
Sun and Google mutually agree on a productization strategy, which includes partnering with one or more tier one wireless carriers, one or more tier-one handset manufacturers and one or more tier-one semiconductor companies. Both parties agree on additional partners as required.
Both Sun and Google are free to monetize the platform. Sun and Google mutually agree on a go to market strategy which includes joint management of the open source community.
Sun and Google mutually agree on PR and partnership announcements.
In December 2005, Android chief Andy Rubin wrote that Google would use the threat of creating a clean-room version of Java as leverage with Sun for a license on its terms, rather than “position ourselves against the industry.”
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Oracle v. Google trial exhibit 12
In a CNET story, posted on May 22, 2008, Android chief Andy Rubin explained Google’s decision to avoid the GPL license that is used for the Java language. By that time, Sun and Google were not finding a way to resolve the licensing issues.
“The thing that worries me about GPL is this: suppose Samsung wants to build a phone that’s different in features and functionality than (one from) LG. If everything on the phone was GPL, any applications or user interface enhancements that Samsung did, they would have to contribute back,” Rubin said. “At the application layer, GPL doesn’t work.”
In a February 2009 e-mail, Dave Sobata, director of corporate development at Google, wrote about a team exploring the idea of working with Sun to get Java more open source, and referenced ideas from Brett Slatkin, a Google software engineer. Slatkin posited that Sun was in trouble, and it would need to sell off its assets. He proposed that Google buy the rights to Java from Sun, create an open software foundation to own all the intellectual property and re-release the code with an even more open license than Sun’s. If successful in acquiring Java, Slatkin noted that Java lawsuits would go away.
Slatkin also outlined possible ways Sun’s situation could play out.
“IBM or Oracle buys rights to Java, further locks down the platform or entangles it in more Patents/IP”
On April 20, 2009, Oracle announced that it was acquiring Sun.
Oracle v. Google trial exhibit 326
As late as 2010, Google was still talking about negotiating a license with Sun and Oracle. In a memo to Rubin, Tim Lindholm, a former Sun Distinguished Engineer and Java guru, wrote that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin asked for an investigation in technical alternatives to Java for Android and Chrome.
“We’ve been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need.”
He added that the threat of moving away from Java hit Safra Katz, Oracle’s president, hard, and putting together a credible alternative would be good for negotiating “better terms and price for Java.”
Oracle v. Google trial exhibit 10
Despite all the efforts exposed in the e-mails and documents in evidence spent on trying to get a deal with Sun over a period of more than five years, or even acquiring rights to Java, Google claims that it didn’t use any restricted Java code in Android’s 15 million lines of code.
Oracle experts looking at Android code came up with a few hundred lines of code, such as 9 lines in “range check,” that were in common with Java.
At issue are the 37 APIs Oracle claims are copyrightable. “This copyright claim is a little crazy…that’s a lawyer made up thing,” Google’s lead lawyer Robert Van Nest said. Oracle’s lawyer, Michael Jacobs, expressed a completely opposite view. Judge William Alsup stated it was a “tough problem.”
Next week the trial continues with Android chief Andy Rubin on the stand. It should make for some interesting testimony.
