If you have only a passing interest in Java development, you probably didn't think of much of yesterday's announcement that Oracle and IBM will cooperate on an open source implementation of Java. But any tech observer knows Google's Android platform is big news, and that Oracle's lawsuit against Google over the Java components underlying the platform is a wild card that could change the way the mobile and embedded landscape develops.

Nobody at Oracle said the word "Android" in the announcement, but the pact with IBM has the potential to seriously undermine the Android platform, no matter how the courtroom struggle turns out.