Never one to choose his words carefully, news of the late Steve Jobs' declaration of a ‘Holy War' with Google over its Android operating system is hardly earth-shattering.

Yet the charismatic visionary's words have become the hot topic of debate in yet another round of Apple vs. Samsung in the courtroom.

According to emails documented during the industry's largest patent-infringement suit in history, Cupertino's former CEO labelled 2011 as the year of a ‘Holy War with Google.'

Used by the South Korean giant during both company's opening arguments in California this week, the emails add weight to Samsung's claims that Apple's real fight is with Google.

A key point of contention in the company's legal strategy, Samsung's lead attorney John Quinn highlighted a string of emails from Jobs to Apple's 100 top employees, ahead of the firm's annual retreat.

Outlining discussion points for the meeting, the crux of Jobs' briefing focused on the fast approaching threat of both Google and Microsoft, who were deemed to be “further along on the technology” regarding the connection and synchronisation of contacts, photos, music, videos etc across all devices using online services.

“Apple is in danger of hanging on to old paradigm for too long (innovator's dilemma)”, wrote Jobs, who also claimed 2011 to be the ‘Year of the Cloud'.

Helping to validate Samsung's claims that Apple's beef is in fact with the internet search titan, Jobs' continued to inform employees of the company's need to “catch up to Android where we are behind” - citing “notifications, tethering and speech” as three key areas of concern.

Yet following the email revelations, Apple's lawyer Harold McElhinny was quick to downplay Google's role in the lawsuit, telling the court: “Don't be misled by that. This case is not about Google.