来源：《彭博商业周刊》
刊登日期：2021年4月7日
超纲词：unravel，quantum
The U.S. Supreme Court dealt Oracle a brutal defeat on April 5, ruling that Google hadn’t violated Oracle’s copyright when it used its Java programming language to develop the Android operating system. The dispute had been going on for a decade, with monumental financial stakes. By siding with Google, the court reversed a ruling that could have allowed Oracle to collect about $9 billion in damages. Instead it’s coming away with nothing.
美国最高法院4月5日作出判决，裁定谷歌在使用Java编程语言开发Android操作系统时没有侵犯甲骨文的版权，甲骨文惨败。这场争论已经持续了十年，牵涉到巨大的经济利益。法院站在谷歌一边，推翻了一项原本可以让甲骨文收取约90亿美元赔偿金的裁决。而现在，甲骨文一无所获。
Company executives immediately shrugged off the loss, saying Oracle has other ways to keep pressuring the company it sees as its main rival. “I’ve already moved on,” says Executive Vice President Ken Glueck. “There is absolute consensus that Google is a problem, and we intend to keep pushing this.”
甲骨文高管立即对这一损失表示不屑，称甲骨文还有其他方式继续向其主要竞争对手谷歌施压。执行副总裁Glueck说:“我已经开始前进了。大家一致认为谷歌是个问题，我们打算继续推进这一进程。”
Glueck is right to suggest that Google faces a continuing political challenge—and Oracle could take some credit for causing it. The database software company has spent years urging the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and dozens of state attorneys general to investigate Google, arguing to regulators that the search giant collects a worrisome amount of personal information about web users and uses it to hinder competitors in the digital advertising market. Google has faced antitrust probes on at least four continents, including ongoing state and federal investigations in the U.S.
Glueck认为谷歌面临着持续的政治挑战，这是正确的——甲骨文可能会因此而受到一些赞扬。这家数据库软件公司多年来一直敦促司法部、联邦贸易委员会和很多州的司法部长调查谷歌，甲骨文向监管机构表示，谷歌收集了大量的网络用户个人信息，多到令人担忧，并利用这些信息阻碍互联网广告市场的竞争对手。谷歌至少在四大洲面临反垄断调查，在美国本土，则包括州和联邦两个层面的调查。
One theory is that Oracle waged the privacy and antitrust battles partly to pressure Google to agree to an Oracle-friendly settlement in the copyright case. With that matter closed, its reasoning for a continued fight is unraveling. But the company has a long history of playing hardball with its corporate rivals. Two decades ago it hired an investigative firm that tried to pay cleaning women to rifle through the trash of a research group whose publications were often sympathetic to Microsoft, and it’s funded dark-money groups to publicize negative reports about Google, Facebook, and Amazon.
一种说法是，甲骨文发起隐私和反垄断之战，部分是为了向谷歌施压，迫使其同意在版权案中与甲骨文达成对自己有利的和解。随着这件事的结束，它继续斗争的理由正在瓦解。但该公司长期以来一直对其竞争对手采取强硬态度。20年前，它雇佣了一家调查公司，付钱给清洁女工，让她们在一个研究小组的垃圾里翻来翻去，该小组的出版物经常支持微软，它还资助了一些黑钱组织，宣传有关谷歌、Facebook和亚马逊的负面报道。
In recent weeks, Glueck has been advocating for policies such as data portability, which would allow users to easily transfer their information from one platform to another. He also pressed for the creation of rules requiring companies to gain consent from users before collecting their data, a condition that large advertising platforms have resisted.
最近几周，Glueck一直在倡导数据便携性等政策，即允许用户轻松地将他们的信息从一个平台转移到另一个平台。他还敦促制定规则，要求公司在收集用户数据之前必须获得用户的同意，这是大型广告平台一直反对的条款。
Given the public scrutiny on the largest tech companies, Oracle could yet score some important victories—assuming it defines “victory” as anything that hurts Google. But it’s unclear that would actually help Oracle, whose revenue has plateaued at about $40 billion annually as its main rivals have grown far larger.
鉴于公众对科技巨头的审查，甲骨文仍有可能取得一些重要的胜利——假设它将“胜利”定义为任何伤害谷歌的东西。但目前还不清楚这是否会真正帮助甲骨文。甲骨文的年收入一直稳定在400亿美元左右，而其主要竞争对手的规模却越来越大。
Google's Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker says the company will use the billions it no longer has to pay Oracle to invest in innovations such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and driverless cars. Oracle doesn’t seem to be the top thing on Walker’s mind. “They have their own business,” he says. “We have ours.”
谷歌首席法律官肯特•沃克表示，谷歌将把不再付给甲骨文的数十亿美元用于人工智能、量子计算和无人驾驶汽车等创新领域的投资。甲骨文似乎并不是沃克最关心的事情。“他们有他们的生意，我们有我们的。”