Oracle: An Interesting Take on the Outfit Once Occupying Dolphin Way
December 30, 2020
The Sea World thing off 101 is history. The weird “aquatorium” has been replaced with glass structures which look like black oat meal boxes on my grandmother’s pantry shelf. Now more insight into the Coddish (not codfish) style database company has been revealed in “When You Can’t Innovate, You Litigate: Oracle Gleefully Takes Credit For Attacks On Section 230 And Google.” The write up explains that Oracle has shifted from technology to litigation and included the catch phrase “When you cannot innovate, litigate.” I like the phrase.
This passage is particularly interesting:
For a while now, people in Silicon Valley have been well aware of Oracle’s reputation as the anti-innovation behemoth, especially following its attack on APIs, interfaces, and how software is developed with the case against Google’s reimplementation of the Java API.
Adding:
The thing is, Oracle more or less admits that it’s doing this purely out of spite and the fact that it has failed to innovate and keep up with more nimble and innovative competitors. Oracle and Larry Ellison made some big bets early on that flopped. And rather than correct course and innovate, it has focused on what we’ve referred to as political entrepreneurship: lobbying and using the powers of government to shut down competitors, rather than innovate.
There are, however, several other facets of Oracle which can explain the company’s behavior; for instance:
- The firm’s investment approach using special purpose entities off shore
- The company’s policy of acquiring companies and allowing them to drift. (I am not sure if this was Oracle’s “invention” or its version of the OpenText approach to gaining revenue and prospects for upselling.)
- The drift down systemic problem affecting HP, IBM, Intel, and SAP. Oracle is just responding in a “path of least resistance” manner.
Interesting write up, but there’s quite a bit of corporate activity beyond the “let’s litigate” mantra.
Stephen E Arnold, December 30, 2020
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