Gawker
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journalismism
Look Who's Talking About Steve Jobs's Health
The wall of secrecy surrounding Steve Jobs's medical crisis is breaking down. Now that the Apple CEO has announced he's taking a six-month medical leave, his confidantes are speaking to the press. But which ones? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by mypupmaxigirl: I do believe that the public, in general, is tired misleading information from the top officers at large companies. Has... 5 Responses | Other threads
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great moments in pr
Control freak Steve Jobs's chaotic Macworld no-show news
Steve Jobs is a famed perfectionist. The way word leaked out he wouldn't keynote at Macworld was anything but controlled, raising concerns that his health had taken an unexpected turn.
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By Owen ThomasComment by websterphreaky: Other adjectives before Freak comes to my mind, like: Arrogant Narcissistic Over-bearing Asshole Greedy Lair ("Oh yes, OS X will run on all G3's" - got... 8 Responses | Other threads
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Mike Murdock
Disabled vet nominates self for Yahoo CEO
How sad that no one convincing has stepped up to run Yahoo! Pursued then spurned by Microsoft, the company is looking to replace founder Jerry Yang. Mike Murdock, a disabled Navy veteran, has raised his hand. The name sounded familiar.
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By Owen ThomasComment by Churchill: Hire em'. He can't be worse than Yang. That's humanely impossible!! 2 Responses | Other threads
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real estate
Inside Larry Ellison's Pacific Heights mansionette
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison doesn't really live in his multimillion-dollar house in San Francisco; he mostly keeps it around for parties, like the rager of a dinner party PR schemestress Brooke Hammerling threw for the 10th anniversary of NetSuite, an online-software company which Ellison has backed since it was a startup. Kara Swisher did one of her let-the-CEO-yammer interviews with NetSuite's Zach Nelson. Videographer Richard Blakeley cut her clip down to just the real-estate porn. It works a lot better with the intro theme from MTV Cribs, doesn't it?
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By Owen ThomasComment by Bearded Rapper: I read somewhere a few years ago that Ellison lived in some badass estate replica of some old Japanese home... 2 Responses | Other threads
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schadenfreude
Party at Larry's house!
We hear there's some kind of party happening tonight at the Pacific Heights mansionette of Larry Ellison, Oracle's multibillionaire CEO. He's not in town, so it should really be a rager. The occasion: The 10th anniversary of NetSuite's founding. Our invite was lost in the mail, but we're glad to hear Ellison's still doing his part for the local economy — especially considering how he just lost $6.6 billion in the stock market — more than any other tech CEO, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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By Owen ThomasComment by Matthew_Maurice: UH, that's a mailto tag in the link to the article. 1 Responses | Other threads
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larry ellison
Larry's buying!
At today's annual meeting, Oracle's top dog told shareholders, "Acquisitions that we have been looking at for some time may now be more attractive." He wasn't any more specific than to say he meant small, growing companies rather than large, public ones. Ooh, I know this great little blog network. Does Oracle have dental?(Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma) -
100-word version
Death of the database
PBS pundit Robert X. Cringely says he realized at last week's MIT Technology Review conference that cloud computing means, in short, "No database." Cringely sees it as the end of Oracle's dominance of information technology. I expect Oracle Cloud any day now. Here's a summary of Cringely's long article, plus the joke about Ellison's sex life, minus Cringely's references to himself: More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by carlfish: Cringely needs a fact-checker who actually understands the technology he writes about, and can slap him over the head when... 2 Responses | Other threads
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Nouveau Gauche
Who wore it better, Googler Marissa Mayer or socialite Sloan Barnett?
A group of ultrarich San Francisco socialites, each with a carbon footprint the size of a small African country, gathered at the home of Larry Ellison's wife Melanie Ellison. The good cause: to promote author Sloan Barnett's book Everything Goes with Green — which just happens to suggest everyone buy her husband Roger Barnett's Shaklee "green" cleaning products. But the conflict of interest wasn't nearly as chatworthy as the conflict of couture! More »
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By Jackson WestComment by emnem: The next time Marissa Mayer rips the drapes off the stage of my alma mater's auditorium and sews them together... 6 Responses | Other threads
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Not Booth Babes
The 15 hottest CEO wives
Lucy Southworth made the cut at AOL's Asylum blog, even though hubby Larry Page isn't the CEO of his company. If you don't want to click through Asylum's pop-up interactive preso, I searched our photo databases to find real-world shots — not Photoshopped promo pictures — of Asylum's two other Valley-related picks. Both have a certain something once considered unsightly on a trophy wife: careers. More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by Patricia2: Not like any of the men are all hot... just saying... ;) 2 Responses | Other threads
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quotable
Larry Ellison on cloud computing buzzword: "Complete gibberish"
"The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion." So says Larry Ellison, who told analysts yesterday that "other than change the wording of some of our ads," the company has no plans to make any actual changes to its business in order to jump on the cloud-computing bandwagon. Really, Ellison needs to get another monkey to do the infomercial thing on stage — he's far more charming when he's being rude but honest. [WSJ] (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)
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By Jackson WestComment by hiddenvalleyranch: Which is funny considering Oracle started working on their new flagship data center at least a year ago which will... more » | Other threads
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larry ellison
HP's big iron helps Oracle ease pent-up server stress
At yesterday's Oracle OpenWorld conference, CEO Larry Ellison donned his best tan and announced a new partnership with Hewlett Packard to sell a hardware and software to speed up databases. A rack of eight devices will include 168 terrabytes of storage and a total of 64 processing cores on 16 Intel microprocessors and will be optimized for Oracle's database software. The idea, as haltingly explained by Ellison in the video above, is to clear the bottleneck between storage servers that hold the data and the database servers that process the requests. We've condensed the speech down to around a minute, but left in the awkward bits so you can wince along with the audience. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by friendslikeJimRome: I was thinking more along the lines of a character from that John Wayne Genghis Khan movie, "The Conqueror" more » | Other threads
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superficial
Power geeks do not age well
As the seasons change and we settle into autumn, I'm reminded once more that yet another year will soon pass and that we're all getting older. Or at least, the old people are. Check out the images below, picturing tech luminaries in their youths juxtaposed with more recent photos. You might find yourself in disagreement with the English poet John Donne, who wrote: "No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face." More »
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Comment by ScalaWag: Andreessen's transformation is the most monstrous. 3 Responses | Other threads
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sex trade
Highly available ladies, for a fee, at Oracle conference
Larry Ellison didn't provide escorts for attendees at this week's Oracle OpenWorld at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Well, certainly not for all of them. But with 45,000 geeks — the kind of geeks who can afford Oracle's software — in town, it's bonus week for local working girls. "Jet-setting adventuress" Kimberlee Cline eyed a few obviously scalable women gliding in and out of the W Hotel, a short stiletto strut from the show. Thanks, Kimberlee — and whatever you do, don't say "exponentially" to a DBA unless you're sure it's not more of a step function.
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Comment by kimbjo: just so we're clear, 90% of women in the W bar are ho's more » | Other threads
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great moments in pr
New Oracle product seamlessly bores the whole enterprise
The canned marketing script says, "Oracle Beehive provides a complete range of collaboration services including conferencing, instant messaging, email, calendar, and team workspaces." Translation: It's a competitor for Microsoft Sharepoint. More cynically: Oh boy, an Oracle wiki. Beehive's unveiling was supposed to kick off this week's 45,000-attendee Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco with a bang. But attendees blogging and tweeting the event were just not impressed. More » -
larry ellison
Judge says Oracle destroyed email evidence
It's been dragging on forever, the 2001 class-action lawsuit filed by shareholders who claim Larry Ellison and his team lied about the company's financial shape prior to Q2 '01 — back when New York still had a World Trade Center. Now, local district judge Susan Illston has ruled that Oracle conveniently failed to preserve Ellison's email from that period, as well as tapes and transcripts from Matthew Symonds, who interviewed Oracle's yachtbuilder-in-chief at length for his Ellison biography, Softwar. More » -
larry ellison
Rival billionaires go to court over three-hulled superyacht
Larry Ellison's $10 million monster trimaran, designed to dominate the America's Cup race, may have been built in vain. Ellison and Swiss / Italian pharmaceuticals billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli have dragged a fight over the century-old race's rules into the courtroom. Even the New York Times has trouble explaining what the argument is about, so I've made you a briefing: More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by raincoaster: Hasn't yacht racing always been a rich man's way of wanking in public anyway? By definition irrelevant, but an audience... 2 Responses | Other threads
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geek love
Marrying into billions still acceptable so long as you're a smart girl
Forbes lays on the Cosmo when it comes to finding wives for the rich: "Today, there are just 110 eligible 10-figure bachelors, including divorced men, in the world. So what does it take to marry one? For starters, looks are great—but brains are even better." Take Melanie Craft, the romance-novelist wife of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. A wife with her own career can stay busy and well-off. The more successful she is on her own, the more time her guy has to hire girls for rides in his Love Copter. And the less money he'll have to hand over in a future settlement. Everybody wins! (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)
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Comment by Melissa Gira Grant: @lastweeksdate: No, really, spell it out -- we can say "cock" here. Find me some good sugar cougar sources, and I'll... more » | Other threads
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mine is bigger
Keeping Bezos, Ellison and Schmidt safe cost $3.4 million last year
Keeping Oracle CEO and cofounder Larry Ellison safe cost the company $1.7 million over the fiscal year ending May 31, 2007. Most of that money went to guards at his homes as well as installing and repairing home security systems, according to Oracle's SEC filings. Part of Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos's 2007 compensation included $1.2 milion for personal security. Google CEO Eric Schmidt spent $475,000 on security in 2007. A lot of the money probably goes to security precautions that might seem a lot more like luxuries than necessities. More »
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Comment by SeanPara: mediawhoremeow: I was wondering how you got on with the full page Jimbo article in the Observer this weekend?... more » | Other threads
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separated at net worth
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is Iron Man
Besides creating one of the world's most successful tech companies, Larry Ellison invented the 5 o'clock shadow plus blazer look. He drives an Audi R8 to the gym — the car Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson described as "like smearing honey onto Keira Knightley." Ellison also owns a gigantic high-tech yacht on to which he disappears for months at a time. Face it, people: He is Tony Stark, known as Iron Man in the press. And his employees think so, too. "Having watched the movie at an Oracle employees premiere," one writes, "I can agree and I'm sure so do my fellow Oracle employees." Clips for comparison, below. More »
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Comment by JOATMON: The Jeremy Clarkson quote is "into", not "onto". World of difference. more » | Other threads
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party report
The future of Jonathan Zittrain (and how to stop it)
Really, I wasn't trying to be posh for the book party Arianna Huffington threw Saturday for Oxford scholar Jonathan Zittrain and his new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It." I pulled up to Larry Ellison's Pacific Heights manse in a black Town Car because that's the only vehicle I was able to flag down in North Beach. Huffington, the pundit turned blog mogul, greeted me at the door and extracted a promise of my best behavior before allowing me in. (One wonders what these people think my worst behavior might be, and if they realize how tempting living down to their expectations is.) More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Rachel Marsden: Jetzt stereotypieren Sie Deutsch. Und mich. :) more » | Other threads
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larry ellison
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the greediest of them all?
By adding up salary, bonuses and vested or sold equity, Forbes came up with a list of the top 12 richest tech CEOs. And taking over the No. 1 slot from Steve Jobs, who slipped to 11th, is Oracle CEO Larry Ellison — who also topped the list of all American CEOs with $192.9 million in compensation in just one year. Still, not enough to bump him up to 13th place on the world billionaire chart. But surely enough to help a whole lot of cash-strapped school districts. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma) -
nerdspotting
Larry Ellison drives an Audi R8 to the gym
A tipster writes in:Larry Ellison spotted driving out of 2882 Sand Hill Road in Audi R8, probably coming out of the gym where he is rumored to work out.
We haven't got a picture of Ellison in workout shorts, but what about the Oracle CEO's car, the Audi R8? Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson described it as "like smearing honey onto Keira Knightley." Try not to think about Ellison smearing honey onto Knightley while watching Clarkson's review: More » -
real estate
Larry Ellison dickers over tax bill, takes money from the children
Peninsula school districts will have less to spend on their evil government entitlement programs thanks to "Uncle Larry" Ellison. Lawyer William Bennett successfully lobbied San Mateo County officials on Ellison's behalf to slash the property tax assessment of the Oracle founder's sixteen-acre Woodside estate. Bennett argued that because the grounds have been styled after a village in Imperial Japan, they're worth much less than the $173 million assessed. Officials agreed that the property is unbelievably tacky, and lowered the assessment to $70 million. Ellison will receive a $3 million refund on previously levied taxes — costing school districts county-wide $1.4 million. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by matto: Has the San Mateo county provided $173 million in services to Larry? $70 million? Have they even provided close to... more » | Other threads
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mine is bigger
Larry Ellison and fellow billionaire trade accusations of rigging the America's Cup
The America's Cup is the world's premier opportunity for the ultrariches to prove whose is bigger. But if you think the race has anything to do with sailing, you'd be mistaken — it's about who can muster the most capital. This year the victor could be rigged by lawyers, not sailors, thanks to a spat between billionaire software tycoon Larry Ellison and billionaire biotech tycoon Ernesto Bertarelli. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by Jeremy: Jackson, if I get invited to the Allianz Cup again, I'll take you: [flickr.com] more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
Ellison to Yang: get over it
Oracle founder and longtime Microsoft opponent Larry Ellison believes Microsoft-Yahoo is a good idea. "MSN is modestly successful," Ellison told the New York Times. "It would be a formidable portal combined with Yahoo." Ellison also suggested Yahoo CEO and cofounder Jerry Yang might not know what's best for the company. Company founders, said the guy who's completed two hostile takeovers in the last four years, "sometimes have a hard time separating their emotions from what's best for shareholders."
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Comment by regel: If Microsoft buys Yahoo, then it is unlikely to buy SAP. A MS-SAP merger would be interesting more » | Other threads
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100-word version
Fake Larry Ellison to Steve Ballmer: The 100-word version
A MarketWatch reporter pens a faux-advice letter from sailing-obsessed takeover king Larry Ellison to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. It's far too long to read the whole thing, so I'll do the work for you. Here's the 100-word version:I have to tell you Steve, I frankly think you show too much. Have you ever seen me jumping up and down in a monkey-dance, red-faced, out of breath, screaming, "I ... LOVE ... THIS ... COMPANY?" You need to be more Zen, cool, calm and collected, like ageless me.
More »
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Comment by fishnec: Good choice of words. Now I want to know who did Larry's plastic surgery? more » | Other threads
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mine is bigger
ArcSight's Robert Shaw gets a free yacht-club membership and you don't
Of all the companies gone public in the past year, only one pays for its CEO's yacht-club membership. That's security-software maker ArcSight, which went public on Valentine's Day. The CEO is Robert Shaw. According to Footnoted, Shaw's other benefits include an apartment near ArcSight's Cupertino headquarters, a car for when he's in San Francisco and airfare for travel between Shaw's homes in Montana and Cabo San Lucas. All of which isn't as unusual as the yacht-club membership. More »
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Comment by Blackjack: Does someone also pick out the brown MnM's and throw them away for him? What about a pony, doesn't he... more » | Other threads
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rumormonger
Benioff pushing Salesforce on Oracle?
Salesforce.com representatives have quietly approached Oracle to see if it would buy the company for $75 a share, Tom Foremski reports. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison already owns a piece of Salesforce, but he's also an early investor in NetSuite, a rival service for online customer-relationship management. The offer, if true, would be a 47 percent premium over Salesforce.com's share price before this morning market opening. More »
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Comment by Princedudi: This story should worry salesforce.com customers big time. We all know the culture at ORACLE, and we all know it... more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
Oracle vs. BEA — the 9-word version
As we've chronicled, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has conducted a war of words with BEA in his protracted takeover fight, threatening to pull his $17-a-share bid or make a lower offer. BEA's board also said it would accept nothing lower than $21 a share. In the end, BEA sold for $19.375 a share. The Wall Street Journal's explanation? "Don't believe anything anyone says in a takeover fight." That sounds about right. -
valley spawn
Megan Ellison loves the ladies, just like Dad
That New York Post item about an "Internet billionaire" and his "lady-loving," "wild-child" daughter who's been to rehab twice still has us thinking. Former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel's daughter Courtenay is wild enough, but her dad's not rich enough. How about Megan Ellison, daughter of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, the aspiring film producer? Her MySpace profile lists her as "bi". And while we haven't heard anything about stints in rehab, she did write the following in a MySpace blog entry: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by chesig: Why give to charities? Why don't our wealthy simply walk up to hard working lower class Americans that are... more » | Other threads
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stocks
NetSuite IPO not good for a quick buck
Web software provider NetSuite's IPO, set for this Friday, should be one of the last of 2007. Despite losing $20.6 million on $76.8 million in revenues — wait, isn't Web software supposed to be more profitable than desktop software? — expectations are running high. Get-rich-quick artists may be disappointed. More »
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Comment by Princedudi: Netsuite will have tough times justifying their price over the next 24 months simply because of the fierce competition by... more » | Other threads
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conflicts of interest
The selling of NetSuite
In every startup's life, before it can go public, there's a ritual called the roadshow. NetSuite, an online-software company backed by Larry Ellison, may begin its run as soon as Thursday, having filed an updated prospectus with the SEC detailing its plans to issue shares to the public. The total: As much as $99 million from the sale of 6.2 million shares. One unlikely buyer has already put his money in: Salesforce.com board member Craig Ramsey, who bought $3.5 million from company CEO Zach Nelson and founder Evan Goldberg. Silicon Alley Insider reports that Ramsey's son works at NetSuite, but the purchase is still curious. Also playing the field: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who put money into Goldberg's NetSuite and Benioff's Salesforce.com.
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By Owen ThomasComment by gettingback: This has nothing to do with IPO? or does it? Zach should be paying close attention to the NetSuite class... more » | Other threads
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jackpot
Larry Ellison has sold off 1 million shares of Oracle every day since late September. Over the last two months, he's cashed out over $707 million. He's on track to liquidate over a billion dollars worth of stock this year. [Docu-Drama] -
valley spawn
Ellison daughter goes Hollywood
The children of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison seem to be drawn to the arts. His son David is an actor and director who was in last year's movie on WWII pilots Flyboys. Now it looks like Larry's daughter is following in her brother's Hollywood footsteps. Megan Ellison is listed as a producer of the about-to-start-filming flick Waking Madison, a thriller about a woman with multiple personalities starring Elisabeth Shue and some chick who posed for Maxim. Let's just hope that Megan's turn goes better than her brother's. Flyboys was named one of 2006's biggest bombs. -
stalemate
Oracle waits for BEA's self-esteem to deflate
Analysts believe that Oracle will still buy BEA ... eventually. However, since no "white knights" have stepped forward to make competing offers, the consensus is that the $17 offer Oracle initially made was too high a price. Carl Icahn, who owns 15 percent of BEA, wrote "I view your public declaration of a $21-per-share, 'take it or leave it' price as a management entrenchment tactic, not a negotiating technique" in an open letter to the BEA board. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison also seems to have a take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards BEA, having said nothing since Oracle's initial offer expired last week. "Now, both sides will probably stand back and stare at each other for a while," said one analyst. How unexciting. -
jackpot
Larry Ellison can buy Facebook without breaking a sweat
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison (who recently quit his fake blog) has sold more than $500 million in Oracle stock in the past month — and is planning to sell 100 million shares worth $2.16 billion at current prices in total. Ellison, who is much richer than you, will own 1.17 billion shares — 22.7 percent of the company's total — at the end of this period of "asset diversification and liquidity." Executives frequently arrange sales months in advance, under "scheduled trading plans," to avoid insider trading accusations. ORCL is up 28 percent year to date. Forbes pegs Ellison's current net worth at $26 billion. (Photo by AP/Bernat Armangue) -
acquisitions
Oracle has responded to yesterday's statement from BEA Systems that it was worth $21 per share. Larry Ellison's software empire had previously offered $17 per share in an unsolicited takeover bid. Oracle says $21 is an "impossibly high price" and "nobody would seriously consider paying that." Well, we saw that coming. So predictable, that Ellison. We look forward to more passive-aggressive statements issuing forth in the future. [Mercury News] -
acquisitions
BEA Systems wants at least $21 a share from Oracle — or anyone else who wants to buy them. That's a mere $4 per share more than Larry Ellison offered. Don't expect Ellison to just say "OK" to this. That would make him look weak and easily manipulated. And it was probably a bad move, since it essentially set a ceiling for what Ellison might offer — any more, and he'd look like he gave in to BEA's demands. We suspect, though, that the deal will get done at some point soon, once the two companies are done playing grabass. Oh, and Oracle rival SAP? Says they don't want BEA. Bitches just jealous. [Mercury News]
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Comment by thedow76: BEA is taking a big risk playing this game. They are hoping that Oracle will up the ante, since they... more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
Larry Ellison is not used to getting rejected. After being spurned twice by BEA's board, Oracle is now threatening to withdraw its $17-a-share offer for the software maker on Sunday. The stock, however, is still trading above $17. Translation? Wall Street thinks Ellison is bluffing. [Tech trader Daily]
valleywag
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Fri Jul 10
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