Google’s Page Says He Can’t Recall Java Email

Murasama

WSJ Online

Since one has to jump through a few hoops to see the whole thing…  under the doctrine of fair use (in order to critique parts of the content), I’ve included it below the cut.

Google Chief Executive Larry Page said he didn’t remember an internal email Oracle Corp.
presented Wednesday as evidence the Internet search company knew it
needed to pay up for Oracle technology used in its mobile phone
software. 

The testimony came on the third day of the companies’
intellectual property trial in San Francisco. Oracle claims Google’s
Android mobile software infringes the patents and copyrights protecting
Oracle’s Java technology. Software company Oracle is seeking some $1
billion in damages. The trial is expected to last about two months.

One internal Google email presented to Mr. Page on Wednesday was addressed to the company’s head of Android, Andy Rubin, and written by an employee named Tim Lindholm. Mr. Lindholm wrote that he had been asked by Mr. Page and Google co-founder Sergey Brin
to find alternatives to Java for use in Android. No good alternatives
exist, Mr. Lindholm wrote, adding that he recommended obtaining a
license to use Java.

Google fought unsuccessfully during pretrial action to have the email
from Mr. Lindholm excluded because of attorney-client privilege. But
Judge William Alsup had noted early Wednesday that “every judge who has
looked at it does not think it’s privileged.”

Wednesday, an Oracle attorney argued that the email contradicts Mr.
Page’s testimony from the day before, when the CEO said he was aware Mr.
Lindholm was a Google employee but didn’t recall him “particularly.” He
also testified that he didn’t recall giving directions to Mr. Lindholm.

When handed a copy of Mr. Lindholm’s email, Mr. Page reiterated his position.  “It doesn’t refresh my recollection,” Mr. Page said Wednesday. “It
sounds like Tim was somebody assigned to do this, probably by Mr.
Rubin.” Mr. Page later said during testimony that he meets and confers
with many Google employees during any given week.

Mr. Page didn’t appear to endure Wednesday’s proceedings as well as
he had the previous day. He frequently stared up at the courtroom
ceiling as he was pressed for direct responses by both Oracle’s counsel
and Judge Alsup.

Oracle obtained Java when it purchased Sun Microsystems in early 2010. Sun had developed Java in the 1990s.

Mr. Page said during testimony Wednesday that Google struggled to
reach an agreement with Sun over Google’s use of Java before Sun was
acquired by Oracle. Google just wanted to develop mobile-phone software
that worked well, he argued, adding that existing Java-based phones at
the time Android was developed were lacking.

“We tried very, very hard to negotiate with Sun over the terms of
Java,” Mr. Page said, but Sun’s strategy of charging licensing fees for a
compatibility test for Java was “not a good way of proceeding, in our
mind.”

Asked directly if he personally had Google move ahead without a Java
license, Mr. Page replied, “I don’t recall if I specifically made that
decision.”

Can’t recall?  Rhetorical question follows… Why is it that these really smart guys (remember, Page is a Stanford graduate and co-founder of one of Silicon Valley’s tech giants) can’t remember certain details especially when they were in the loop on something important?  Even Larry Ellison (Oracle CEO) can’t seem to recall the details, waffling all over the place during questioning.  Sure, when you are chief executive, there’s a lot of information and details that one has to attend to.  Sure, I can understand this is part of the “training” that company execs go through with their legal departments.  I can see trivial bits of matter being shoveled away, but not important ones critical to their respective businesses.  Basically, this evasiveness is BS.  It’s part of the problem with the business and political culture in the U.S. which ends up spilling over into society in general where the concepts of honesty and accountability are rare.

These rich dudes need to remember they are under oath.  But I guess being evasive and forgetful does not constitute lying.  Page said he wasn’t familiar with Lindholm except that he was Google employee.   Yet, Lindholm’s  August 6, 2010 e-mail to Andy Rubin (head of Android) says:

What we’ve been asked to do (by Larry and Sergei [sic]) is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome. We’ve been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need.

Google fought tooth and nail to have this particular e-mail from Lindholm redacted as evidence and was denied by Judge Alsup.  Lindholm is key because prior to working at Google, he was a Distinguished Engineer for the Java software at Sun Microsystems.  He was also an original member of the Java project as well as a senior architect of the Java virtual machine and the Java 2 runtime environment.  Considering that background and level of experience as it pertained to Java, I find it difficult to believe that the really smart and detailed oriented co-founders of Google would not have a working knowledge of Lindholm.

Furthermore, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was previously Sun Microsystems Chief Technology Officer (which he left in 1997 when he became CEO of Novell).  One of Schmidt’s expertise at Sun was J.ava.  If you connect the dots, it should become clear that Lindholm is key (which is why Google lawyers fought hard to have this piece of evidence removed) and that he wasn’t just some lowly engineer at Google, unknown to the higher ups.  The “degrees of separation” will become even clearer once Lindhom, Schmidt and James Gossling (the chief scientist at Sun who originally came up with the design for Java in 1991) are called to testify.  If the principals in question on Google’s side continue to act dumb, well, then maybe these guys really don’t know what they are doing after all and just happened to be incredibly lucky when it came to search as Schmidt claimed when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Committee.

Related Posts

Leave a Reply