Google chief dings Java as patent trial continues

Google co-founder Larry Page stuck to his guns in a San Francisco court on Wednesday, testifying that the Internet giant did nothing wrong when it built the Android platform for mobile gadgets. Page returned to the stand to field questions in a trial over accusations by business software titan Oracle that Google opted to infringe on Java program copyright and patents instead of licensing code from Sun Microsystems. "We did nothing wrong," Page said as he dueled with an Oracle attorney. "We are very careful about what information we use and do not use." Page, swapping standard Silicon Valley casual wear for a charcoal gray suit, light blue shirt and matching tie, kept his eyes toward the jury and smiled tightly as he testified. Page held firm even when confronted with a key piece of evidence -- an email from Android team engineers saying that Google should license Java technology from Sun Microsystems for the Android project. Google worked long and hard with Sun to work out a way to incorporate Java into a smartphone platform, but efforts failed and Google went its own way with Android, according to Page. "I think Sun, and now Oracle, needed something that actually worked," Page said. "We had a closet full of Java phones that didn't work." While Google would have preferred to collaborate with Sun, it invested in its own smartphone platform, according to the co-founder. "Things like the iPhone didn't have Java at all and somehow magically got in consumers' hands," Page said. "I don't think it mattered." The chiefs of Google and Oracle were opening witnesses this week in a patent case aimed at Android software used to power smartphones and tablet computers. Oracle is accusing Google of infringing on Java computer programming language patents and copyrights Oracle obtained when it bought Java inventor Sun Microsystems in a $7.4 billion deal brokered in 2009. Google has denied the claims and said it believes mobile phone makers and other users of its open-source Android operating system are entitled to use the Java technology in dispute. Google unveiled the free Android operating system two years before Oracle bought Sun. Protecting and profiting from Java software technology were prime reasons for Oracle's decision in 2009 to buy Sun, according to evidence presented so far at trial.