Oracle's original claim of 6B has been reduced dowafternoon hundred million after goog basically dismantled oracle's claims in court.  A couple of the law sites showing this news claim that oracle is about to drop the claims concerning a couple of patents in question so as to avoid not being laughed at every time they go to court.  Well,  one down and just 2 (msft & appl) to go...

This combined with Googles ramp up of its own patent library will soon mean Android is 100% backed by Google and safe from many of these ridiculous law suites.

Can't wait for them to retaliate to Apple's stupid slide to unlock patent with their Google's notification bar patent. lol.

It's impossible to overstate how important this win is to Android. Most of Apple's litigation is easy to design around. Several versions of Android don't violate slide to unlock at all and Samsung could have completely avoided Apple's wrath by coming up with their own design aesthetic.

Oracle's IP claim goes right to the beating heart of the technology behind the Android platform. If Android is found to violate it, licensing fees will have to be paid. Even if Google is eventually forced to pay fees to Oracle, minimizing the damages will go a long way to preserving the platform. The sword of Damocles just got a lot lighter.

This is extremely good news if your Google...Oracle on the other hand, not so much. Going from $6 Billion, to $100 million was already a serious blow, but to now have patents dropped from the case I have to wonder what the point is to continue this legal charade.

If not for Android, I believe Java would have gone the way of Adobe's Flash.

The point was that the stakes were high. Even a $100 million win would make a very nice profit for Oracle after the lawyers are paid. The prospect of claiming a couple bucks from the sale of every Android device was well worth the risk.

As for Java, it's really not comparable to Flash. Almost every comp sci graduate learns to program Java and there are still tons of specialized enterprise applications that depend on it. Oh, and untold millions of feature phones. In fact, Java ME still sees more web usage than Android (but not for much longer):

http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8&qpcustomd=1

Excellent news for Android. And yes, with Motorola patent portfolio the situation can only better. Next target: the "M$ tax".