Okay, but Oracle doesn't own the talents of everyone who knows Java, and has nothing to do with Eclipse.

Do K&R collect massive royalties for all the operating systems written in C? Does Oxford demand licensing fees from speakers of English-derived dialects? Most of the words ("APIs") are the same.

They did create their own VM -- Dalvik.

Sort of -- but not in the same sense that the .NET CLR is MS's own VM, with its own unique bytecode (MSIL code).

Dalvik compiles ("dexes") Java bytecode (most of which, except for Android-specific libraries, would run on any JVM) down to Dalvik 'bytecode'.

It's honestly not that different from what the MSVM tried to do. The main difference, it seems to me, between the MS/Sun lawsuit over the MSVM, and the Google/Oracle suit, is that 1) Google did implement the entire JDK -- they simply added more proprietary libraries that can't run on a conventional JVM and 2) MS had a binding agreement with Sun.

If Google wins (and for the record I'm on their side of this completely), my question is -- does that mean Microsoft didn't need that license agreement with Sun to begin with -- the one signed in 1996 that eventually caused the downfall of J++/MSVM, and the birth of .NET?

That would be an interesting turn.

So asking for forgiveness and not permission would work out for Google? I don't see how that can work, the only way is if API's are not copyrightable, which will be up to the judge and not the jury.

AIUI the main problem with Microsoft's implementation was that they were calling it "Java" with the implication that it was compatible.

Again -- and this probably works in your argument's favor -- MS did implement a JDK under a license agreement with Sun, and then violated that agreement by corrupting the JDK specification with incomplete/missing pieces.

MS didn't start work on the .NET VM until they had to abandon their corrupted Java VM under a court order -- the whole reason C# and .NET exists in the first place instead of J++ and the MSVM.