James Gosling jumps ship from Google to Liquid Robotics

Java founding father James Gosling has decided to jump ship from Google just months after joining the firm when Sun Microsystems was taken over by Oracle.

Gosling, credited with inventing the programming language while at Sun, has decided to try his hand at something a little bit different, joining former Sun colleague Bill Vass at his new venture Liquid Robotics.

The company provides ocean-based robotic technology and cloud-based oceanic data-as-a-service, and is rapidly expanding having just secured $22m of venture capital funding, and went for Gosling as its new chief software architect.

Gosling described Liquid Robotics, which manufactured the world's first self-propelled marine robotic drone among other technology innovations, as "incurably cool".

"Liquid Robotics can totally change the way we look at oceans. We'll be able to get a wide variety of detailed data more cheaply and pervasively than any other way," he said.

"It involves a large data problem and a large-scale control problem, both of which are fascinating to me and have been passions of mine for years."

Why Gosling left Google after just over five months remains a mystery. After all, he must have been well aware of what he'd got himself into as Google was already involved in a lawsuit with Oracle over the use of Java patents in Android.

It remains to be seen whether the loss of Gosling will affect Google's ability to execute its legal strategy on the matter.

31 Aug 2011