James Gosling joins Google

THE GODFATHER OF JAVA, James Gosling has announced he's taken a position at Google.

He wrote in his blog today, "Through some odd twists in the road over the past year, and a tardis encountered along the way, I find myself starting employment at Google today."

As might be expected for someone with his resumé that wasn't his only opportunity, apparently. He continued, "One of the toughest things about life is making choices. I had a hard time saying 'no' to a bunch of other excellent possibilities."

But it seems that Google's strength and variety of opportunities won Gosling over in the end, as he said, "I find it odd that this time I'm taking the road more travelled by, but it looks like interesting fun with huge leverage."

We can surmise that some of that 'huge leverage' likely involves the opportunity to guide the further development of the fastest growing mobile operating system, Android, which is based upon Linux but uses a Java-like approach for running applications software.

Gosling concluded, "I don't know what I'll be working on. I expect it'll be a bit of everything, seasoned with a large dose of grumpy curmudgeon."

We can speculate that part of what Gosling might soon find himself working on will be helping Google fend off Oracle's pending lawsuit against Android, which alleges that parts of Android infringe Oracle's copyrights and patents on Java. As the founder of Java, he's just the person to do that. µ