What happened one week before Oracle sued Google over Java use on Android?
Google bought Instantiations, a company producing Java and Ajax development tools. Eric Clayberg, VP of Product Development of Instantiations, wrote:
Instantiations’ award-winning Java and Ajax development tools and our incredible Eclipse team have been acquired by Google! We’re all very excited about taking our technology and team to the next level - and there is no bigger step up than Google!
So, Google specifically bought their Eclipse team and the tools for Java and Ajax development. In fact their Smalltalk roots are still alive under the Instantiations name. ZDNet’s Ed Burnette comments that it is thought that GWT Designer is the reason of the acquisition. Now Google is promising that Instantiation Developer Tools will be available for developers. They promise better integration of the tools into the Google plugin for Eclipse. Thus Googla retreats all their involvement with JavaOne and, soon after this, announce further tooling for java development (though not specifically Android oriented)...
One should, when thinking about this kind of issues, have always present that the safest way to have a successful business during California Gold Rush was selling supplies and tooling to the gold-seekers.
Why is Google announcing this just the day JavaOne 2010 starts? One can speculate that they want to give a message that google is not killing java, and promoting themselves as suppliers of java development tooling as an alternative to Oracle. So, their message is something like: “Google won’t go to JavaOne, but Google plugin for Eclipse will be the best imaginable tool”