Google is using Java language and its API, not JVM or its libs. Google never called Android a Java compatible or Java. Google has written all of its libs and the Dalvik VM.

Now look at this story, it's a company claiming to be Android compatible and using Android runtimes. All they did was a fork and customization of Android. Not there's anything wrong with that, but if you are a member of OHA you agree not to do it.

So there you go:

Google never agreed to anything, Acer did.

Google wrote code and used non-copyrightable part of Java, Alibaba did not (but they still didn't do anything wrong).

Google got sued, Acer/Alibaba did not.

The difference is that you are free to use the Android CTS, unlike the Java TCK, which had a Field Of Use restriction that did not allow using it for mobile.

The big difference is that you can do whatever you want with Android and it's components, but don't expect any help, from the OHA if you are making something incompatible.

Does that really help? Sun offered a different platform for mobile which Android is a massive deviation from. J2ME was rubbish but does that change their rights.

Is the defence of this action that Google aren't quite as unreasonable as Oracle? Is that the standard we hold "don't be evil" to?

The legal tool being used is different but it definitely seems anti-competitive.

It means you aren't beholden at all to Google to be an "Android compatible" device, you just need to pass the freely available compatibility test.

Ask the Apache Harmony guys if that's only slightly less unreasonable than Sun/Oracle.