[_pmf_]

I think their legal shenanigans regarding usage of Java technology plays a major role here: they simply do not own Java technology. It was a horrible mistake to use it without Sun's/Oracle's approval and as soon as the first lawsuit ends in favor of Oracle, they will be milked to an extent that has not yet been seen.

[pjmlp]

Every other commercial JDK vendor is able to comply with licenses and still provide language extensions and their own VM stacks. There are quite a few examples to chose from.

Why should Google be a special snowflake that doesn't play by the same rules?

[AnimalMuppet]

Why should they have to play by the same rules? If the rules they are playing by are judged to be legal, what's wrong with what they're doing?

[pjmlp]

To avoid doing a Microsoft move on us that now enjoy the pain of writing not so portable Java code across official standar Java™ and Android devices, thus making a fork in the Java ecosystem.

[geodel]

Well that special snowflake is sued and they are having their day in court. Oracle has extinguished many rivals in court and maybe they will do it again.

[AnimalMuppet]

First, Oracle's legal theories have not held up very well in court.

Second, Oracle has explicitly said that OpenJDK is OK, and Google has shifted to an implementation based on OpenJDK.

So I wouldn't hold my breath for your prediction coming true...

[pjmlp]

> Google has shifted to an implementation based on OpenJDK.

No they have not, just go look at AOSP source code.

Yes they are using it instead of Harmony nowadays, but they are cherry picking features and APIs, instead of providing 100% compatibility with the language standard.