Will Google Stop Using Java?

Google is so hacked off with Oracle’s java antics it is seriously considering taking it out of Android and replacing it with Apple’s open sauce Swift software.

Can Oracle Make Money Off Android?

Database outfit Oracle’s moves to try and copyright APIs appear to be part of an attempt for Oracle to make money on Android.

Oracle has asked a U.S. judge for permission to update its copyright lawsuit against Google to include the Android which it claims contains its Java APIs.

Oracle sued Google five years ago and is seeking roughly $1 billion in copyright claims if it manages to convince a court that its APIs are in Android it could up the damages by several billions.

Oracle wrote in a letter to Judge William Alsup on Wednesday that the record of the first trial does not reflect any of these developments in the market, including Google’s dramatically enhanced market position in search engine advertising and the overall financial results from its continuing and expanded infringement.

Last month, the US Supreme Court upheld an appeals court’s ruling that allows Oracle to seek licensing fees for the use of some of the Java language. Google had said it should use Java APIs without paying a fee.

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Adobe Eases Privacy Concerns

Tests on the latest version of Adobe System’s e-reader software reveals the company is now collecting less data following a privacy-related row last month, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Digital Editions version 4.0.1 appears to only collect data on e-books that have DRM (Digital Rights Management), wrote Cooper Quintin, a staff technologist with the EFF. DRM places restrictions on how content can be used with the intent of thwarting piracy.

Adobe was criticized in early October after it was discovered Digital Editions collected metadata about e-books on a device, even if the e-books did not have DRM. Those logs were also sent to Adobe in plain text.

Since that data was not encrypted, critics including the EFF contended it posed major privacy risks for users. For example, plain text content could be intercepted by an interloper from a user who is on the same public Wi-Fi network.

Adobe said on Oct. 23 it fixed the issues in 4.0.1, saying it would not collect data on e-books without DRM and encrypt data that is transmitted back to the company.

Quintin wrote the EFF’s latest test showed the “only time we saw data going back to an Adobe server was when an e-book with DRM was opened for the first time. This data is most likely being sent back for DRM verification purposes, and it is being sent over HTTPS.”

If an e-book has DRM, Adobe may record how long a person reads it or the percentage of the content that is read, which is used for “metered” pricing models.

Other technical metrics are also collected, such as the IP address of the device downloading a book, a unique ID assigned to the specific applications being used at the time and a unique ID for the device, according to Adobe.

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Google Goes To The Supreme Court

Google has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on contentious litigation against Oracle arguing that the high court must act to protect innovation in high tech.

Google’s request seeks to overturn an appeals court ruling that found Oracle could copyright APIs of its Java programming language, which Google used to design its Android smartphone operating system.

Oracle sued Google in 2010, claiming that Google had improperly incorporated parts of Java into Android. Oracle wants $1 billion on its copyright claims. Oracle claimed Google’s Android trampled on its rights to the structure of 37 Java APIs. A San Francisco federal judge had decided that Oracle could not claim copyright protection on parts of Java, but earlier this year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington disagreed.

In its filing this week, Google said the company would never been able to innovate had the Federal Circuit’s reasoning been in place when the company was formed.

“Early computer companies could have blocked vast amounts of technological development by claiming 95-year copyright monopolies over the basic building blocks of computer design and programming,” Google wrote.

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Does B&N Have A Buyer?

Investment firm G Asset Management said on Friday that it had offered to acquire a 51 percent stake in either Barnes & Noble Inc or in the bookseller’s Nook digital business.

The little known firm said the proposal for Barnes & Noble as a whole would be for $22 per share, which would value the top U.S. bookstore chain at $1.32 billion. It comes after earlier proposal in November for $20 per share, its second.

G Asset, which not did detail how it would finance a deal, also made an alternative offer to buy Nook for $5 per share, saying spinning off the digital books and device business would create “substantial shareholder value.”

The latest offer for the whole company would value Barnes & Noble at $1.32 billion, while the proposal for Nook would value that unit at about $300 million.

The firm has previously pressed the company to spin off its Nook unit from Barnes & Noble’s bookstore and college units.

Michael Glickstein, G Asset’s Chief Investment Officer, and the only person listed on the firm’s website, did not immediately return a request for comment.

Barnes & Noble shares were up 5.8 percent at $17.75 in afternoon trading after going as high as $19.12 after the news was released, suggesting Wall Street analysts were doubtful a deal would get done.

A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman declined to comment beyond confirming that the company had received G Asset’s offer.

The original Nook device was launched in 2009 to help Barnes & Noble fend off Amazon.com Inc and allowed the retailer to win as much as 27 percent of the U.S. e-books market.

But the company lost hundreds of millions of dollars trying to keep pace with deep-pocketed rivals such as Amazon, Apple Inc and Google Inc. It has scaled back its Nook business and focusing more on content and software.

Two years ago, Microsoft Corp invested $300 million in the Nook unit for a 17.6 percent stake, valuing the division at $1.7 billion. In late 2012, Pearson PLC took a 5 percent stake in Nook for $89.5 million.

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Amazon Looking For Investors

Amazon has issued its first bonds in nearly 15 years as it looks to borrow money while interest rates are low.

Amazon’s position as the undisputed king of online retail has put the company in a good position to take advantage of cheap borrowing rates. Amazon issued three, five and 10-year bonds at 0.38, 0.63 and 0.93 percent above US Treasury rates with investors clamouring to get a ride on the firm’s coattails.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon’s $3bn bond issue has attracted more than $10bn in investor interest. According to ratings agency Moody’s, the firm will use the cash generated in the bond sale to make investments such as buying its corporate headquarters.

Standard and Poor’s rated Amazon’s debt as AA- and said there was minimal financial risk with Amazon. While Moody’s rated the bonds at Baa1, the agency also forecast strong growth in sales for Amazon in the coming years. It seems that Amazon, given that it hasn’t got any other bonds, is proving popular with bond investors despite reporting low profits and recently having been grilled in the UK Parliament over allegations of tax avoidance.

Amazon has been diversifying the ways it generates cash, and while it long ago moved away from simply selling books, the firm is a big player in cloud services through its Amazon Web Services division and is aggressively marketing its own brand of electronics devices in the Kindle range of ebook readers and tablets.

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Is Alcatel-Lucent Running Low?

Alcatel-Lucent, which was the combination of Lucent and French network equipment provider Alcatel, has been going through a tough few years as it battles against rivals such as Huawei, Nokia Siemens and Ericsson. Now the firm has reportedly looked to investment bank Goldman Sachs for a loan in return for the firm putting up some of its assets as collateral.

According to Bloomberg’s sources, the amount of the loan has yet to be disclosed and the firm even mooted the prospect of selling assets including its undersea cable and enterprise businesses. The sources said discussions about the sale were still at an early stage and claimed neither asset could fetch more than €1bn, highlighting just how far the firm has fallen in recent years.

Alcatel-Lucent needs to sort out its balance sheet because the firm needs to service more than €2bn debt in the next three years. The company might have to look at its vast patents portfolio, though whether it might sell them or merely license them is not clear at this stage.

With Huawei and ZTE winning business away from European vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens, it is not surprising that the firm is having to take drastic action in order to keep the lights on. However for Alcatel-Lucent it is a embarrassing situation for the firm.

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Oracle Wants More Money From SAP

Oracle is appealing the damages awarded from SAP that it was granted and is pushing for more.

The news has disappointed SAP, according to a German newspaper, and the firm is worried that the appeal will draw out the five year long legal battle even longer.

“We are disappointed that the lawsuit Oracle pulls further out,” said a SAP spokesman to the German newspaper Mannheimer Morgen.

“We had agreed on a sensible arrangement, because we believe that this case has gone on long enough. We remain committed to bring this dispute to an end.”

Neither firm has commented yet, but the appeal follows SAP’s admission of liability in the Tomorrownow affair.

SAP pleaded guilty last year and acknowledged that its Tomorrownow subsidiary had done wrong. Tomorrownow was accused of downloading information belonging to Oracle, including software and customer information related to Peoplesoft users.

Oracle was initially awarded $1.3bn in damages but this was knocked down to $306m by a judge who told it that it had two options, accept that sum or take SAP back to court.

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Jury Finds Google Liable

A jury has found Google liable for copyright infringement in its use of Java in Android, but so far has not decided whether that infringement was protected by rules governing “fair use.”

The verdict, delivered Monday after a week of deliberations by the jury, is a partial victory for Oracle in its lawsuit against Google. But Oracle will have to wait longer — possibly for a retrial — to see whether Google will escape liability by claiming fair use.

Google’s attorney, Robert Van Nest, immediately told the judge that Google would file for a mistrial. Google’s argument will be that the same jury must decide both the copyright infringement and fair use issues.

The jury also decided that Sun’s public statements about Java might have suggested to Google that it did not need a license for Java.

But in another setback for Google, it decided there was insufficient evidence to show that Google relied on that information.

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Is Samsung Flip Flopping?

Samsung is apparently rethinking its decision not to bring Android 4 to the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab.

Earlier the company stated that neither device could be updated due to the size of Samsung’s TouchWiz interface. The news created a bit of an issue with users sharpening scythes, pitchforks and lighting torches to go on a lynching. Now word on the street is that the company is considering backing down on its decision due to “strong customer demand.”

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