[repolfx]

The Google / Oracle case didn't end up being about patents because they were all invalidated or deemed not to apply, iirc.

It ended up being about copyrights and whether or not you can copyright APIs.

It's unfortunate that Oracle chose to break the long-standing convention on this topic, however, it's not entirely surprising that eventually someone did. It's not at all clear why APIs should not be copyrightable, given the intent and wording of copyright laws and treaties - it's merely a convenient collective belief the software industry has had. It's now being tested in court and apparently splitting judges both ways.

I would also note that you always take such risks when building on platforms. The web is basically driven by Google these days, with other browser vendors either struggling to keep up or just giving up entirely (see, Safari) creating a new "works best in IE" era. And Google's stewardship of the web is hardly uncontroversial. Lots of obvious, major technical problems go unresolved for years or decades. AMP seems to be upsetting a lot of people. And of course there's not much stability: the web guys don't seem able to pick a direction and stick with it (e.g. web components/shadow dom stuff).