I am far more impressed by an ability to whitelist sites for scripting (i.e. block any scripts from unapproved sources) than I am by simply blocking ads. At the moment, I'm using a combination of Firefox and the 'NoScript' extension, and no ad-blocker of any kind. Nonetheless, I see very few ads, although I do see any that are loaded by the site I'm visiting - but since they rarely have javascript from an allowed site, they are static, and cannot 'fingerprint' my devices.

Compared to anything that allows anyone and everyone to run javascript on my machines, most sites are at least 3 times faster (both in loading, and in any actions on that site), and consume far less memory.

Simple - Google needed app developers to write for the platform, and phone app developers mostly speak Java. So Google came up with the Dalvik VM that can run recompiled Java code in a compatible environment.

PJ is still backing the site, and keeping an eye on things, but Mark Webbink (from Red Hat's general counsel) is doing the the articles.. and seems to be as impartial as PJ, though not with the same humour (so far, at least).

The articles there go into details about Oracles claims and Googles counters.