"Google may owe Oracle nearly as much money in damages as Oracle paid to buy all of Sun Microsystems," according to IGD News Service. According to a court filing from Google late last week, Oracle's damages expert, Boston University professor Iain Cockburn, has estimated that Google would owe Oracle between $1.4 billion and $6.1 billion if it is found to have infringed on Oracle's Java patents, which Oracle acquired when it bought Sun last year for $7.4 billion. Yet, according to Google: "Oracle's 'methodology' for calculating damages is based on fundamental legal errors and improperly inflates their estimates." …

Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and recommendation engine Hunch has a new project in the works, and, according to an SEC filing, she's in the process of raising $2 million to give it life. "Entrepreneurs gonna entrepreneur," Fake said on her blog this week. "I have a new start-up! We are building something consumer-facing, something social -- all the things I love best -- for optimal founder-market fit! It's crazy times in the Valley and while I prefer doing start-ups when the going's tough, money is scarce, and engineers are unemployed -- the best time to start a …

Facebook users want LinkedIn-like professional social-networking features. So says Inside Facebook, based on the recent popularity of BranchOut. The professional social networking Facebook app grew its monthly active user count from 32,897 to 817,367 in a week, according to our AppData tracking service, with its daily active user count following behind, at 163,578 today. "The unusually big spurt ... which the company says has come without any marketing growth, indicates that Facebook users want professional social networking," Inside Facebook insists. "They just apparently hadn't been given a tool that met their needs. This bodes well for other Facebook …

In other Google news, the search giant has reached a deal with The British Library to make about 250,000 of its historic books, pamphlets and periodicals available online. "It will allow readers to view, search and copy the out-of-copyright works at no charge on both the library and Google books websites," note BBC News. While Google has similar partnerships with about 40 libraries around the world, the company's plans to digitize copyrighted texts has run into serious legal problems in the U.S., BBC News explains. Among the first works to go online from The British Library are a …

Google this weekend scooped up DVR software company SageTV for an undisclosed sum. It's only a matter of time before Google TV adds DVR functionality, right? Not quite. Rakesh Agrawal, founder of SageTV rival SnapStream Media, doesn't think native DVR capabilities jibe with Google's grant strategy. "I recently read 'In the Plex' by Steven Levy and it gives a glimpse of how Google thinks," Agrawal writes in a blog post, "and for Google, the future is all about the Internet and the cloud." GigaOm's Janko Roettgers agrees. "Google TV is designed to work with existing DVRs, not to …

Paying for the mistakes of its Web 1.0 forefathers, Facebook is losing talented employees over fears of another tech bubble. "While Silicon Valley and Wall Street debate whether a new technology bubble is in the making, some early Facebook employees are not taking any chances," The New York Times reports. "They're leaving the company to cash out on millions of dollars in stock options while Facebook's valuation continues to soar." Says one former Facebook employee in reference to the first dot-com crash: "If you've seen the world blow up once, you just don't know what's going to happen …

Companies with online exposure -- i.e., nearly all of them -- are getting smarter about hacking incidents, reports The Wall Street Journal. "In the past, companies were typically caught off guard when a breach occurred and responses were often flat-footed, requiring updates and further clarifications to concerned customers," it writes. "Now an industry of experts -- including lawyers, public-relations specialists and forensic investigators -- has emerged to help companies determine what to disclose and how to reassure victims." Now, executives without much computer savvy are more aware of the threat posed by hacking, "leading companies to formulate breach-response plans …

Upon dismal fiscal first-quarter earnings, analysts are asking what's really wrong with Research In Motion, and what the future holds for the Blackberry maker. "RIM's platform is burning," the Guardian explains, adding, "It's more of a smoldering." Translation? "RIM hasn't released a major new phone since August 2010 ... It sort-of showed off a new version of the Torch in May; that will actually be released in September. (Way to kill the sales, people.)" Yep, an aging smartphone line and delays in introducing new devices are widely perceived to be eroding RIM's business, but faster than anyone expected. …

As it inches closer to a long-awaited U.S. debut, music streaming service Spotify just finalized a "huge" funding round that gives it a valuation of about $1 billion, reports All Things D. "The European company has raised around $100 million from DST, Kleiner Perkins and Accel," it writes. Spotify has reportedly been working on the round for over six months, but people familiar with the company tell All Things D that it didn't actually close until this week. And, not a moment too soon. "Spotify CEO Daniel Ek can use some of that cash to support a planned …

Sorry, iTunes. Despite vigorous efforts by Apple to break into the space, Netflix and Hulu remain the leaders of premium online video entertainment, according to a survey of Web users by Citigroup's Mark Mahaney. "As ubiquitous a destination for digital music purchases, iTunes has not been able to hit the ground running in online video," 9to5Mac.com huffs. Netflix, it notes, is a subscription play and Hulu is an ad-supported model backed by major players. Polled users were asked to pick up to five Web sites they preferred for watching video online. Only 9.8% chose iTunes, while even fewer …