Oracle Presses Case With Google E-mails

The Google executive in charge of its Android mobile phone software at the heart of the company's legal dispute with Oracle was confronted in court by a series of internal e-mails he wrote years earlier cautioning the search company against an "uncharacteristically" aggressive use of outside intellectual property to develop the technology.

Andy Rubin, Google's senior vice president of mobile, was shown during his testimony at a trial in San Francisco a series of e-mails he wrote about six years ago advising others at Google that the company should buy the right to use Sun Microsystems' Java technology in Android. An Oracle attorney pressed Rubin on statements he had made in his emails, including doubts that Google could safely and legitimately develop its own version of Java for Android without paying Sun for the privilege -- as others in the technology industry have.