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Although Oracle denied they bought Sun just to sue Google you have to wonder since they are claiming "billions" in damages and only paid $7.4 billion after IBM dropped their $7.0 billion bid.

This purchase was such a seminal moment for the industry you have to wonder what an alternative history would look like if say IBM or Google made the purchase not to mention some dark horses like Amazon or Red hat.



They absolutely bought Sun just to sue. I used to know someone personally involved on the case. Oracle is a horrible company.

To be fair, Google's "don't be evil" is also a bunch of crap. They've done their fair share of shady and exploitive things.


Google wasn't evil, at least not before the IPO (which is when I worked there). People took the slogan seriously and based decisions on it. I don't know what happened.


The people that intended to do evil merely waited until those who didn't intend to do so finished implementing the things they were implementing.

Then they used that sound infrastructure to do evil with, as they had intended to do all along.

Those people that took the slogan seriously were used.


Those are very damning accusations. Care to give some examples?


I think Google's quiet transformation from a search company to a data company that is trying to learn everything about everyone is the prime example.

Google buzz was also one of the early moves that showed this, opting everyone who uses gmail into a social network was pretty evil if you ask me.


I am troubled by your expansive definition of the word "evil".


There was no "transformation" - Google clearly signalled its intention from the get-go in the mission statement.


like what?


I meant dark horse only in the sense of unlikely winner. Nothing derogatory was meant by my statement.




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