Google has been busy with court appearances this week for a couple of reasons: Eric Schmidt defending Google from antitrust allegations stating that they favor certain services which greatly affects their competitors and CEO Larry Page to settle Oracle dispute.  Just to clarify, they were not in the same courtroom.

Page, along with Chief Legal Officer David Drummond and Google Senior VP of Mobile Andy Rubin, talked with Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison and Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz appeared in court twice this week to discuss settlement regarding patent infringements and copyright violations.  They did not reach settlement during their first meeting, and the second wasn’t fruitful either.

It is still uncertain whether there will be a third meeting, according to the filing in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, a call will be scheduled for Thursday to determine “when further discussions will take place and whether the further attendance of Mr. Ellison and Mr. Page will be required.”

Oracle’s $6.1 billion request for damages from Google was trashed by U.S. District Judge William Alsup but was given the chance to revise it.  Oracle’s lawyer Steven Holtzman said that the revised damages estimate amount to $202 million for patent infringement and as much as $960 million for copyright infringement which is roughly $1.16 billion, a fifth of the original amount.

If they do not reach settlement, they would meet for a court hearing set on October 31st.  If Google fails to settle, Oracle would probably be pushing for permanent injunction of Android devices which could force Google into a lucrative licensing deal.  If Google wants none of that, they could just drop the Java2ME code they’re using in Android via the Apache Project’s Java Standard Edition “Harmony,” the main reason why Oracle is suing them.

As for Schmidt, things aren’t going well as he took a hit from Senate representatives as well as competitors.  During the hearing, Schmidt admitted that “the company might be a monopoly but also portrayed Google as being passionately devoted to serving people as a search engine offering the most helpful data and information on the internet.”  Antitrust committees from the US, Europe and Asia are starting to question Google’s data collection practices.

But not everyone was successful in their aim to “trap” Schmidt.  Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) asked why Google ranked third in most of the results, Schmidt smoothly said he’d need to see the technical details to provide a direct answer, but added that Lee’s likening of Google’s product results and those of product comparison Websites are like comparing apples to oranges.  Then Lee came right to the point of the hearing: “You’ve cooked it so that you’re always third.” Schmidt: “Senator, may I simply say that I can assure you we’ve not cooked anything.”