eWEEK - April 18 2011

his dislike for some of the directions Oracle has taken since the acquisition of SunÐ I would not be surprised to see him lead an effort for an alternative path forward for Google, and maybe even for the Java community at large.º With Gosling on board, Google can continue to try to resolve the Oracle lawsuit and also look to a Java-compat-ible language like Scala, which runs on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine). The 5-year-old Scala, designed for multicore architectures, could be a salve for Google.

Some observers say it could nullify the lawsuit and give Google a programming language that would be key to future multicore architectures supporting cloud computing and massive parallelism. Perhaps Gosling could navigate a Scala diversion for Google.

ªI expect he'll be pushed to think about how mobile and cross-chan-nel experiences will evolve, and get involved in pushing Google' s creative development teams to think outside the box,º said Jeffrey Hammond, an analyst at Forrester Research.

That it could. Yet Gosling has a skill set that could be employed in all manner of ways at Google. Since Sun had its share of patents and efforts related to search, he could potentially branch into search, mobile,

Google has Gosling:
Now what?

ª My hope is that he is going to
pursue Google' s efforts to make Java
relevant on mobile phones and pos-
sibly help put an end to the Google/
Oracle drama,º said Sacha Labourey,
CEO of CloudBees. ª James is not
only a great tech visionary, he is
also a great business mind, so I
have no doubt his various talents
will be welcomed at Google.º
ª I view this as a prestige play more
than anything else,º said intellectual
property analyst Florian Mueller.
ªGo sling isn't the first marquee pro-
grammer to sign up with Google,
and he probably won' t be the last.º
However, Mueller doesn't see a role
for Gosling in helping Google in its
litigation with Oracle.

ª Both Oracle and Google have access to all the information they need in connection with their law-suit,º Mueller said. ª Some is open source, and for the remainder, there' s the ongoing discovery process. This won' t tilt the scales in Google' s favor.

ª When Gosling saw that Oracle asserts against Google one of the patents he authored, he expressed some criticism of the patent system on his blog, but he stopped short of advocating the abolition of software patents.º Mueller said it would be interesting if Gosling used his leverage to change the law around patents. ª It would be wonderfulÐ though I' m afraid it won' t happenÐ if Google could ask politicians to do away with software patents and if Gosling could be a vocal supporter of such an effort,º he said.

ª Unfortunately, Google' s opposition to software patents appears to relate only to other companies' patents, not their own. They fought 10 years to obtain a patent on the Google Doodle, and they cherish their PageRank and other search patents.º «

INTERVIEW: The Java founder brings his talents to
Google, but it' s still unclear what his role with the
search giant will be.

By Darryl K. Taft

Bagging Java creator James Gosling is a coup for Google. Now the question is, What is he going to do for the search giant?

The Oracle lawsuit challenging Google' s Android operating system aside, getting Gosling in-house is a big deal for a company that has for some time been making a lot of moves around JavaÐ from tools to mobile platforms to related languages and research projects.

That said, in a March

28 blog post, Gosling said he didn' t know what he would be working on at Google. It appears as though he has entered into an open-ended agreement with Google to work on strategic efforts. Some industry observers offered their thoughts.

ª To some degree, I expect it to be a think tank gig overall, but maybe he' ll work on the next big thing beyond

Java?º said Mark Driver, research vice
president at Gartner. ª Of course, it' s
all speculation at this point.º
Bob Bickel, eXo chairman and
adviser to Java cloud software pro-
vider CloudBees, said, ª This is pure
speculation, but given the difficult
relationship between Google and Ora-
cle relative to JavaÐ and given that
James has been pretty public about