New York — Score one for search engine leader in the Silicon Valley recruiting wars: Google Inc., which is squaring off in court over how Oracle’s technology is used in Android, has hired James Gosling, the notable father of the Java programming language at Sun Microsystems, has announced that he will be taking up a new, undisclosed position at Google.
Gosling depicted his experience of first day of work at Mountain View, Calif.-based Google on Monday. Describing about his new position, Gosling wrote in a blog post that he sees it being “interesting fun with huge leverage,” adding that he is uncertain what he will be working on as of yet.
The news comes at an time when Oracle is prosecuting Google for copyright and patent infringement concerning Google’s use of Java in its mobile operating system, Android.
Perhaps the most knowledgeable person to speak on the infringement, Gosling has been highly critical of Oracle’s decision to go after Google, stating that “filing patent suits was never in Sun’s genetic code.” It is possible that in addition to his day-to-day operations at the company, he may play a valuable part in Google’s fight against the lawsuit.
Gosling previously worked for decades at Sun Microsystems, until the once-mighty technology giant that was acquired last year by Oracle for $5.6 billion. Surprisingly, last April, he quit Oracle, and later explained to eWeek that the company had lowballed his salary and was micromanaging him and the other Java programmers.
“Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good,” Gosling said in a blog post after the acquisition, humorously calling out Oracle CEO Larry Ellison as “the Prince of Darkness.”
James Gosling (Credit: James Martin/CNET)
Gosling was on his own for about a year. “One of the toughest things about life is making choices. He acknowledged in a blog post today, “I had a hard time saying ‘no’ to a bunch of other excellent possibilities.”
A few other interesting tidbits about Gosling: He has earned degrees from the University of Calgary and Carnegie Mellon. Furthermore, according to his Wikipedia profile, he was elected to the United States National Academy of Engineering, and in 2007, made an officer of the Order of Canada.
However, Google has apparently won out in the end, which says a lot for the company’s appeal. Gosling also complimented the organization by writing, “I find it odd that this time I’m taking the road more traveled by, but it looks like interesting fun with huge leverage.”
Surprisingly, Google has been on a hiring binge of late, with schemes to set a company record for new appointees this year. Among its recent, notable hires are networking expert Milo Medin, and former Sun engineer Tim Bray, who joined to work on the development of Android.
An Oracle spokeswoman declined to comment. A Google spokesman also declined to comment, apart from confirming Gosling’s hiring.
Google has called Oracle’s lawsuit “baseless” and an attack both on Google “and the open-source Java community.”