In a nine-page letter to the court, which you can read below, Oracle explained that Page, then a Google president, made the decision to acquire Android in 2005, and that later he participated in the licensing talks that occurred between Sun Microsystems and Google concerning Android’s use of Java. He also participated in further communications with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison after that company acquired Sun last year.

Oracle is also seeking to take a deposition of three other people in the case:

Dipchand “Deep” Nishar: The Wall Street Journal described Nishar as an “unsung Google hero” in 2008 when he left to join LinkedIn as its vice president of product. Oracle cites his LinkedIn profile as saying he “started and managed Google’s mobile initiatives worldwide” from 2005 to 2007. Oracle says that Nishar was involved with the Java negotiations between Sun and Google, and wrote several of the documents that Oracle says are going to prove relevant in the case.

Bob Lee: Currently the CTO at Square, Jack Dorsey’s mobile payment start-up, Lee was before that a software engineer at Google whom Oracle portrays in the letter as having “led the core library development for Android.” Oracle says his testimony “would be relevant both with respect to certain aspects of Oracle’s liability and damages theories,” and that documents Lee wrote, which Oracle expects to produce as evidence, demonstrate an “intimate knowledge of Sun’s licensing practices, which is relevant to Oracle’s claims of willful infringement.”

Tim Lindholm: A former Sun Microsystems employee, Lindholm, Oracle says, created some of the Java technologies at issue in the lawsuit. As Oracle puts it: “He constructed one of the very first Java virtual machines, and came to Google with intimate knowledge of the Java platform architecture.” Lindholm not only built the first Java virtual machine, he cowrote a book on it. “In addition, Mr. Lindholm participated in the negotiations that took place between Sun and Google for a Java license,” Oracle says.

Coming only days after the judge in the case, William Alsup, notified Google that he has some tough questions about some of the underlying facts in the case — there is the awkward fact that Google did initially negotiate both with Sun and Oracle for a Java license and then walked away — this request is Oracle’s way of turning up the heat on Google.

Oracle sued Google last August, saying that Android infringes on Java patents it owns. (Original complaint here.) Oracle recently told the court it thinks Google should cough up $2.6 billion in damages.

Oracle’s letter contains the text of a Google statement opposing the deposition requests, saying the request is late and that deposing Page is a “harassing demand” and irrelevant to the case at hand. “Oracle comes to this Court ‘gnashing [its] teeth’ with an eleventh-hour attempt to cram extra depositions into the last couple weeks of the discovery period,” the statement says.

Google argues that Oracle has already deposed Andy Rubin, Google’s VP of mobile platforms, and Dan Bornstein, whom it describes as the “primary architect” of one of the Java virtual machines at issue in the case. (See Bornstein talk about it in this video from Google I/O in 2008.) These two should meet Oracle’s needs, Google says.

Oracle rebutted that Google has asked to depose Ellison, and that Google had sought to prevent Oracle from deposing former Google CEO and current Chairman Eric Schmidt.

The companies are supposed to have wrapped up the discovery phase ahead of the trial by July 29, but these new requests would seem to push that phase into August and ultimately delay the start of the trial.

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Well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur Reid Hoffman (pictured here) will become CEO of LinkedIn again, taking on the job he had for nearly four years after founding the business networking company in 2003.

Hoffman replaces current CEO Dan Nye, who has resigned and will leave the company in mid-January. He came to LinkedIn almost two years ago and was positioned then as the person who was going to eventually be taking LinkedIn public.

More interesting in the shift is the appointment of former Yahoo exec Jeff Weiner as interim president, overseeing day-to-day operations at LinkedIn.

Weiner has been an executive-in-residence at both Accel Partners and Greylock Partners (a LinkedIn investor) since he left Yahoo earlier this year.

He will remain at those venture firms during the transition, even though he will be working at LinkedIn too. At Yahoo (YHOO), Weiner was EVP of the Network Division, which included all of its consumer-facing units.

In an interview earlier today, Hoffman portrayed the changes as friendly, praising Nye’s efforts as top exec, noting the company’s growth from eight million members to 33 million, reaching profitability, and its $53 million in funding in June at a $1 billion valuation.

But, Hoffman said, “We came to the decision that I needed to be working full time, driving the vision.”

Nye (pictured here) noted the recent hiring of Google (GOOG) exec Dipchand “Deep” Nishar as VP of products, which he spearheaded, was an important moment. Hoffman had been in charge of products.

“I wanted to grow this company into a world-class operation,” he said. “Now, Reid needs no friction, so he can move quickly and do what’s necessary for the next phase.”

Weiner (pictured here) said he was looking forward to getting back into operations, after playing an advisory role recently. “I have been really impressed with the company the leadership team has built,” he said. “I see a lot more potential going forward.”

Although it has raised $100 million in total, LinkedIn has not been immune to the recent economic weakness across Silicon Valley. It recently did some layoffs too, and has been focusing much more on increasing the number of revenue streams it has.

Below is a video interview I did with Weiner in June of 2007, when he was still at Yahoo.

And, below that is another I did with Nye, nine months after he first got to LinkedIn, in which he talks about his plans for the company. (Yes, that is a Hawaiian shirt, and Nye does give Yahoo advice in it.)

Weiner:

Nye: