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Oracle on Thursday asked a judge to let its attorneys grill Google’s CEO Larry Page in the Android vs. Java battle. Judge Donna Ryu of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California will consider the request to allow a deposition of Google’s co-founder about the role he played in the company’s 2005 Android acquisition.

“Mr. Page is Google’s CEO, and he reportedly made the decision to acquire Android, Inc., and thereby develop and launch the platform that Oracle now contends infringes its patents and copyrights,” Oracle wrote in its letter to the judge.

“Mr. Page also participated in negotiations that took place between Sun and Google regarding a Java license for Android and in subsequent communications with Oracle’s CEO, Larry Ellison. Oracle believes that Mr. Page’s testimony will likely be relevant with respect to a number of other key issues in this case, as well, including the value of the infringement to Google.”

Google Denies Wrongdoing

Oracle filed a complaint against Google for patent and copyright infringement in August. At that time, Oracle spokesperson Karen Tillman said, “In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement.”

Oracle argued that Android uses Java technologies to compete with Java, which is itself a competitive mobile operating system. Google did not immediately respond to Oracle’s allegations. But in October, Google emerged with a response that Google’s platform, including its Dalvik virtual machine, does not violate Oracle’s intellectual property.

“Although software applications for the Android platform may be written in the Java programming language, the Dalvik bytecode is distinct and different from Java bytecode. The Dalvik VM is not a Java VM,” Google wrote.

“The core class libraries of the Dalvik VM incorporate a subset of Apache Harmony, a clean room, open source implementation… More info

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In good news for the tech sector, Google on Thursday announced earnings for the quarter ended June 30, 2011. Google reported revenues of $9.03 billion.

“We had a great quarter, with revenue up 32 percent year on year for a record-breaking over $9 billion of revenue,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “I’m super excited about the amazing response to Google+ which lets you share just like in real life.”

At a company press conference, Page said the company would continue making significant investments while keeping financial management tight.

“Of course, I understand the need to balance the short term with the longer-term needs because our revenues and growth serve as the engine that funds our innovation,” Page said. “But our emerging high-usage products can generate huge new businesses for Google in the long run, just like search, and we have tons of experience monetizing successful products over time.”

By the Numbers

GAAP operating income in the second quarter totaled $2.88 billion, or 32 percent of revenues. That compares to GAAP operating income of $2.37 billion, or 35 percent of revenues, in the year-ago period. GAAP net income in the second quarter of 2011 was $2.51 billion, compared to $1.84 billion in the year-ago period.

Google-owned sites generated revenues of $6.23 billion, or 69 percent of total revenues. That’s a 39 percent increase over second quarter 2010 revenues of $4.5 billion. And
Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.48 billion, or 28 percent of total revenues, a 20 percent increase. Revenues from outside of the United States totaled $4.87 billion, 54 percent of total revenues. That’s fairly consistent with the year-ago period at 53 percent.

Operating expenses, other than cost of revenues, were $2.97 billion in the second quarter of 2011, or 33 percent of revenues, compared to $1.99 billion in the second… Read more

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Apple Beats Google in Most Valuable Brand Survey
Move over, Google. Apple has taken away your MVB (most valuable brand) crown. Apple officially bumped the search giant after four consecutive years atop the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands study.

Apple registered a whopping 84 percent increase in value over the past year. (Can you say iPad?) Millward Brown Optimor, a WPP company that calculates brand equity, reports Apple increased in value 859 percent since 2006 and now stands at $153.3 billion.

“The importance of brand for global business success is becoming increasingly significant,” said David Roth at WPP. “In the last year, the global economy shifted from recovery to real growth, the combined value of all brands in the Top 100 ranking has risen by 64 percent since 2006, and is now worth $2.4 trillion. Strong brands, while not immune to the vicissitudes of the market, are more protected, prepared, resourceful and resilient.”

Tech Giants Rule

Technology brands make up one-third of the Top 100 brands. While Apple leads the ranking, Google came in second with a brand value of $111.5 billion and IBM ranked third at $100.9 billion.

Facebook made its debut in the Top 100 ranking this year at number 35 with the highest increase in brand value, 246 percent. That makes the Facebook brand worth $19.1 billion. Online retailer Amazon.com also edged past Walmart to become the number-one retail brand and 14th overall with a 37 percent rise in brand value to $37.6 billion.

“Google has been flat over the past decade. Apple has been on a near-vertical hike for those same years. It kind of surprises me that it took this long for the brand equity to catch up. There was no doubt that after Apple passed Microsoft financially that they would pass Google in terms of brand equity,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at…
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Google has launched a new search capability that enables cooking aficionados to scour the web for recipes. Called Recipe View, the new search mode aims to help family chefs find the right recipe without having to navigate through the unrelated links that a standard keyword search might produce.

To activate Recipe View, click on the icon for Recipes on a search-results page and enter the name of a particular entr Details

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Google has denied a report that it’s working with Verizon Communications to allow faster delivery of paid online content. The New York Times said such an agreement would undercut the concept of Net neutrality and suggested it could lead to tiered service with higher costs for premium delivery.

Net neutrality has been the focus of battles between Comcast and other Internet providers and the Federal Communications Commission. Following a court ruling that gave the FCC limited authority to regulate broadband restrictions imposed by Internet providers, the FCC has been seeking to reclassify broadband service as a “telecommunications service” but only apply part of the rules. Providers have opposed that move.

While Google said, “We have not had any conversations with Verizon about paying for carriage of Google or YouTube traffic,” it did not challenge a Wall Street Journal story that said the companies are working on a legislative model to prevent delays or blocking of Internet traffic.

While broadband providers want the right to regulate traffic on their networks, they have also said prioritized traffic could lead to higher costs. That could be particularly true for Google’s YouTube, which generates high traffic.

If Google and Verizon are indeed working on a plan to pay for priority content delivery, private-interest groups are certain to object.

Meantime, wireless carriers are preparing for a faster Internet and an expected explosion in traffic by scrapping unlimited mobile data plans and setting prices for levels of service. AT&T, for example, now charges $15 a month for 200MB of data and $25 for 2GB. Subscribers who exceed those caps will be charged overage fees. Details

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Google on Thursday rolled out the second iteration of its search solution for retailers. Google Commerce Search 2.0 overhauls the original product that aims to help e-commerce players in the United States and United Kingdom prepare for the summer shopping season.

Nitin Mangtani, a senior product manager at Google, promised a better experience for online shoppers and more control with “immediate ROI” for retailers. The pricing model for Google Commerce Search starts at $25,000 a year.

One of the questions that comes to analyst Greg Sterling’s mind is how much of a revenue opportunity Google Commerce Search really is. Granted, e-commerce is a large market. But can Google win new customers and recognize any meaningful revenue with its custom retail search solution?

“It remains to be seen,” said Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. “Google said they have 30,000 enterprise search customers. They wouldn’t break out the retail numbers. They’ve dropped the price, which means they haven’t gotten a lot of adoption and they are trying to drive more.”

Remaking Commerce Search

Google rolled out the original version of Commerce Search a little more than six months ago without much fanfare. Google bills it as an enterprise-grade web-site search solution. It’s hosted in Google’s cloud. The second iteration of the product makes several improvements Google hopes will drive greater adoption.

One of the improvements is more merchant customization in the form of a merchandising dashboard. The dashboard gives merchants more control over promotions, ranking rules and filtering with no custom coding needed. Google also rolled out new retailer controls, like time-based promotions, a navigation bar with filters, and product ranking rules, that set the stage for on-the-fly seasonal optimizations.

“This is a strong product. Google is trying to be a little more aggressive with these improvements,” Sterling said. “I don’t know how it stacks up… Read more

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AFP – Google lashed out at Apple on Wednesday over new rules which it said would effectively prevent the Internet search and advertising giant from placing ads inside iPhone applications.

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Google is dropping Windows. The search giant will use Mac or Linux operating systems on all employee computers because of security concerns about Microsoft’s Windows.

The Financial Times, quoting several unnamed Google employees, reported the story on Tuesday. It said the move away from Windows began in January after the search giant was attacked by hackers in China. Most Google employees are choosing Mac, one source told the Times. Google hasn’t commented on the report.

‘Something’s Not Right’

Microsoft’s head of corporate communications, Frank X. Shaw, noted in a Twitter post that the Chinese security breaches involved “IE 6 and employee behavior,” not Windows per se. “Something’s not right w/the FT.com Google-dumps-Windows story,” he wrote. Except for Shaw’s tweets, Microsoft hasn’t commented on the report.

If a Google employee wants to remain on Windows, special clearance is reportedly required from senior executives, and getting a new Windows machine requires specific approval from the company’s CIO.

The security breach was reported by Google in mid-January. In a post on the Official Google Blog, Chief Legal Officer David Drummond revealed that, in “mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.”

The attack, he noted, was not just on Google, but on a “wide range of businesses” involved in the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors. Drummond said “a primary goal was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human-rights activists,” which was apparently not successful. Reports by independent security consultants indicated that the attackers appear to have been working directly or indirectly on behalf of Chinese government intelligence agencies.

Trojan as a Windows DLL

According to iDefense Labs, an independent security company, the December attack used malicious code delivered via PDF e-mail attachments, which deposited a backdoor Trojan as a Windows DLL.

Like… Read more

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Apple’s share price hit a milestone on Wednesday — pushing the company’s market capitalization higher than Microsoft’s for the first time.

Apple’s shares closed at $244.11, putting its value at $222 billion. Microsoft’s shares slipped to $25.01, pegging the software giant’s value at $219 billion. Market cap is the dollar value of a company’s outstanding shares. Microsoft has far more employees, products and customers, but on paper, at least, Apple is the world’s highest-valued tech company.

“Very simply, investors believe Apple’s growth prospects are superior to Microsoft’s,” says Bill Whyman, research director at ISI Group.

Apple is worth more than Microsoft but less than ExxonMobil, No. 1 among U.S companies at $278 billion. Apple’s string of successes include the iTunes music store, iPod music device, iPhone smartphone and iPad tablet PC. Market value “in and of itself doesn’t help them,” says Gene Munster, analyst at Piper Jaffray. “What helps them is great products.”

Microsoft, on the other hand, has been plodding. Its newest PC operating system, Windows 7, has been a success, but only on the heels of its lackluster predecessor, Vista. Last year, Microsoft sold 15.9 million Windows smartphones, 9 percent fewer than in 2008; Apple sold 24.9 million iPhones, twice as many as a year earlier, research firm Gartner says.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer this week announced the departure of two top executives to clear the way for him to take more direct control of key upgrades to the Xbox gaming system and Windows smartphones this fall. Apple’s milestone increases pressure on Ballmer to “find new growth opportunities while maintaining the health” of current core businesses, says Matt Rosoff, analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft.

Apple has come a long way since co-founder Steve Jobs returned in late 1996 after a hiatus. Challenges remain. It doesn’t sell much to big organizations. Google is… Details

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NewsFactor – Google gave its online advertising clients a new tool Thursday that gives them the ability to restrict their online marketing campaigns to the world’s top 1,000 web domains from Facebook on down, based on unique visitor numbers. Google said it launched the new Ad Planner 1000 filter in response to feedback from a number of customers running branding campaigns. More info

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