Which company created the Java programming language and was acquired by Oracle in 2010?

Sun Microsystems created the Java programming language and was acquired by Oracle in 2010.

Sun Microsystems was founded in 1982 by Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, and Bill Joy. It became known for workstation computers, servers, the Solaris operating system, and the SPARC processor architecture.

Sun developed Java in the 1990s. The language was designed around the idea of writing software once and running it on many platforms through the Java virtual machine. Java became especially important in enterprise software and Android-related development.

Oracle announced an agreement to acquire Sun in 2009, and the transaction closed in January 2010. Oracle retained control of Java and other Sun technologies. Sun is therefore a historical company rather than a currently separate market-cap leader.