The E-Mail That Google Really Doesn't Want A Jury To See

Lawyers defending Google against a patent and copyright lawsuit brought by Oracle are trying desperately to keep a particular engineer’s e-mail out of the public eye -- but it looks like they’re unlikely to succeed.

The e-mail, from Google engineer Tim Lindholm to the head of Google’s Android division, Andy Rubin, recommends that Google negotiate for a license to Java rather than pick an alternative system. The key portion of the email was read aloud from the bench by U.S. District Judge William Alsup during a July 21 hearing. The second paragraph of the email reads: “What we've actually been asked to do by Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] 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.”