[metamatt]

Just my opinion:

Sun probably knew that at the time but due to hubris didn't want to admit it, so they just willingly looked the other way and kept doing what they were doing. So you get Jonathan Schwartz, in 2007, wishing that Google would take a license, but begrudgingly congratulating them anyway, but not doing the "Official Android Pro SDK" thing you suggest. (http://web.archive.org/web/20101023072550/http://blogs.sun.c...). So that was a small mistake, a missed opportunity, but life went on.

Then at some point (maybe even before they purchased Sun, maybe after?), Oracle decided to waaay up the stakes with this lawsuit. Given how it's turned out, I'd call that a much bigger mistake.

So it was probably a little clear even to Sun in 2007 that alienating Google was the wrong call but/so they decided not to do anything about it, and then Oracle, well, I don't know whether it's correct to characterize this as missing a call vs intentionally taking a big risk in hopes of a big reward.