Java users, your long nightmare is over. Insert exclamation here.

I have reason to believe that one day, Larry Ellison went to his computer and engaged in his usual practice of asking questions with the ask.com toolbar. The question that he asked that fateful day was as follows:

Is Oracle doing everything it can to promote Java?

The ask.com toolbar replied:

Yes, master. People love Oracle's Java distributions. The fact that you provide helpful software with the Java installations by default is especially impressive.

Ellison smiled, but then he realized something. Is it good to question the ask.com toolbar about the usefulness of the ask.com toolbar? He decided that he had better get a second - and a third - opinion.

"Safra and Mark, thanks for stopping by," Larry said. "I wanted to ask you something - is Oracle doing everything it can to promote Java?"

"Glad you asked, Larry," replied Safra Catz. "People hate our guts."

Mark Hurd chimed in. "They can't understand why we'd bundle what they call 'malware' with Java, just for the sake of a few bucks."

Safra typed something on her (unreleased) Oracle tablet. "Look at what this noted blogger said back in 2013," she said. "He stopped installing new versions of Java and OpenOffice because of Oracle's policies."

"But we got rid of OpenOffice back in 2011," replied Larry.

"He didn't know that," said Safra.

Larry thought for a moment, said "Next slide, please," but then remembered that he wasn't giving a presentation. "So the bundling of the ask.com toolbar with Java is angering the very technical community that we want to court for our line of business products." He thought some more. "So I think that we should ditch our agreement with ask.com..."

Safra and Mark were about to jump for joy, but Larry continued.

"...and sign an exclusive deal with Yahoo so that we can fool Java installers into installing Yahoo as their default search engine! This will be great!"

As Safra and Mark left the room, Safra heard Mark mutter under his breath, "I wonder if HP will take me back."