With Yahoo search deal, Oracle's Ellison on Google -- again
SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft isn't the only huge software maker alarmed at what Google's technology is doing to growth rates in the business-applications market.
The long-running copyright lawsuit between Google and Oracle over the latter's Java programming language, now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court, is evidence of that.
Last month, Oracle also sent a notice to Java users discouraging them from using Google's Chrome web browser.
"We strongly recommend Java users consider alternatives to Chrome as soon as possible. Instead, we recommend Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari as longer-term options," the notice on my PC read, after I tried to update my version of Java from within Chrome.
That advice came after Google moved to end Chrome's interoperability with a standardized application programming interface, or API, used by Java.
Now Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has attacked Google's business again, this time by pointing Java users to Yahoo's search tool.
The Oracle marketing agreement does more than give Yahoo the chance to gain search market share on its larger rival.
It also points to a tech landscape getting fiercer as the software industry matures and revenue growth rates for some older platforms continue to slow.
Oracle and Microsoft both have seen their annual revenue growth rates shrink to the single digit range.
Of the two, Microsoft's Office sales have been hurt more by Google's free apps, because the search giant doesn't yet have database software to challenge Oracle's biggest franchise.
Yet Google's strategy of driving down the cost of accessing data via the Internet, along with a broader move to such cloud-based services from Amazon and Salesforce as well, has been a thorn in Oracle's side.
The pending lawsuit over whether Google should be able to use Java without paying copyright royalties helps explain the harsh marketing words over Chrome's lack of support for the Java API.
The heightened Oracle-Google battle is part of a business where the lines between software markets are blurring.
Google, still the dominant provider of search, now faces an opposing axis formed by Yahoo, Oracle, Microsoft (whose technology powers both its own Bing service and Yahoo search) and Mozilla, another web browser.
Last November, Mozilla signed an agreement to send Yahoo search traffic that helped Yahoo gain market share in the first quarter.
In the market for mobile operating software, meanwhile, Google's Android faces off primarily against Apple's iOS but also with Microsoft's mobile version of Windows.
But Android has value for Google mainly as a platform to sell search and display ads, including video.
And in that market, Google's most important rival is Facebook.
Yet last May, Oracle won a reversal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears copyright cases, and which ruled that parts of Java were protected.
Google, which used Java as a key building block of Android, has received support from industry groups worried the ruling could dampen software innovation.
It appealed to the U.S. high court, which could decide any day now on whether it will hear the case.
As the tech industry gets ever longer in the tooth – it's now 30 years since the PC boom and 15 years from the dotcom era – look for competition among all these tech giants to get even hotter.