In retrospect (Oracle v. Google) that doesn't seem like such a bad decision!

Admittedly, the concern about the JVM backend was different from what got Google in trouble; indeed, GNU had their own reimplementation of Java (GCJ / GNU Classpath) which was equally potentially infringing (and was the main reason bytecode output was a problem in the first place - because GCC supported bytecode input already, it could allow for round tripping). But the overall message of avoiding proprietary programming languages/environments seems prescient.