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San Francisco - Google’s Android operating system has generated revenue of $31bn and $22bn in profit, a lawyer for Oracle said in court while disclosing figures Google says shouldn’t have been made public.
An analysis of the search engine giant’s tightly held financial information was disclosed January 14 by an Oracle attorney in the database maker’s lawsuit accusing Google of using its Java software without paying for it to develop Android. Google said in a court filing that the lawyer based her statement on information derived from its confidential internal financial documents.
“Look at the extraordinary magnitude of commerciality here,” the Oracle attorney, Annette Hurst, told a federal magistrate judge as she discussed Android revenue and profit, which have never been publicly disclosed.
Android, which was launched in 2008, makes money for Google in two ways: advertisements supplied by Google shown on Android phones, and revenue Google takes from its mobile app store, Google Play.The figure is based on an methodology not outlined by Oracle, said a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly.‘Extremely Sensitive’
Google urged a San Francisco federal judge on January 20 to redact and seal portions of the public transcript of last week’s hearing, saying the Oracle attorney improperly disclosed “extremely sensitive information” from documents that were marked “Attorney’s Eyes Only.”
“Google does not publicly allocate revenues or profits to Android separate and apart from Google’s general business,” the company said in the filing.
“That non-public financial data is highly sensitive, and public disclosure could have significant negative effects on Google’s business.” Deborah Hellinger, a spokeswoman for Oracle, declined to comment on the disclosures in court.
The transcript vanished without a trace from electronic court records at about 3 p.m. Pacific standard time with no indication that the court ruled on Google’s request to seal it.The five-year-old showdown between Google and Oracle has returned to US District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco after a pit stop at the US Supreme Court, where Google lost a bid to derail the case. The damages Oracle now seeks may exceed $1bn since it expanded its claims to cover newer Android versions.
