Google is quietly emailing Android developers with offers to buy their source code. The pitch is "unlock new revenue" and "help transform tools and products." The actual ask is access to production codebases and archived side projects, to train Google's AI coding tools. Jason Koebler at 404 Media obtained the email and broke the story this week.

The framing is partnership. The structure is procurement. The license is non-exclusive — which means the developer keeps the IP and Google gets a permanent, non-revocable right to use the code as training data. Once a model is trained on a codebase, the codebase is in the weights. You can sue Google for breach of contract; you cannot sue the model.

The panel's argument lands on the simpler reading: Google has a product that doesn't work as well as the competition, and the data they need to mak ...