Once upon a time, when Android was new to the mobile platform market, it decided to make its platform completely compatible with the then most popular programming language called Java. At the same time, iOS was leading in the mobile market while using Objective-C as its language of choice to write iOS apps.
Things have long been changed since then; now, Android is a leader among mobile operating systems with more than half of the world’s smartphones and smart devices running of OS based on Android. It has long surpassed iOS to become the top preferred mobile OS running on more than 80% of smartphones.
A few years ago, Oracle sued Google over the code that the company used in the Android platform. After many trials and having billions of dollars at stake, the two tech giants will finally receive their final verdict from the supreme court.
But what made Oracle file a lawsuit against the Android Maker?
At the time when Google was trying to make an android platform more competitive against apple’s iOS. It decided to make the platform interoperable with Java programming language. The company decided to re-implement several Java APIs, which included 37 APIs about which oracle filed its lawsuit against Google.
If Oracle wins the lawsuit, it would be entitled to a piece of the android platform due to the implementation of this 37 API.
Google vs Oracle lawsuit has seen three trials and two appeals to date. Millions of dollars have been spent on seasonal litigators, expert witnesses, and useless attempts in making the non-technical juries understand what programming is.
The 37 Java APIs in question, make up about 11,500 lines of code, in some 12 to 14 billion lines of code in Android OS.
The problem for Google is that the 37 APIs in question include basic packages for functions like math or representing dates and times. They contain the most basic of java packages like java.lang.* and java.util.*, which is necessary for any class to run successfully on JVM.
All this may be coming to a climactic close today morning UTC. Using a teleconference, the US Supreme Court will carry an oral argument in the middle of the pandemic.
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