Lunching with Larry

Larry Ellison at his confident, contradictory best in a Forbes interview.

a. "Google has had one or two good ideas. Searching the Internet, right, and then selling ads. That's a complete list of everything clever they've ever done."

Larry, you have done one thing right in your history - database. Everything else Oracle has been a bit player at or has acquired. You have done ok for a "one trick pony".

b. "It is hard to believe that Microsoft has Google envy. We're in the software business--we don't do ads. We're not going to sell ads on top of our database."

Yes, but boy will Oracle try to sell over, under, around the database in the stack.

c  On Open Source "It's like Fort Knox, except everyone has the keys and takes whatever gold they want whenever they want it."

And Oracle is marshalling to drive out all the Raiders of that Ark.

d. On Oracle's cash. "We can buy back our stock. We can buy…I'll give you a list. We can buy BEA and buy our stock back. Buy a lot of our stock back and buy Business Objects. Buy a lot of our stock back and buy somebody else".

Larry, how about giving some of it back to customers in lower maintenance?

e. On partying. "Not in Monaco. But usually, we're never at the dock. A lot of people do. They have parties. They want to be seen."

Us tech folks are too geeky to be want to be seen.

f. "The trouble with software is that it is very hard to show your aunt in Florida what you've done.".

Now that, Larry is uncalled for. We have become a pretty demographically young state. You should sail more here. We will show you our open source voting practices...