Gawker
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patrick byrne
Wacky Overstock.com chief presides over massive financial deception
For years, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne has maintained a loony crusade against Wall Street traders, claiming there was a conspiracy to sell his company's stock short. (He may well have been onto something — but then again, a stopped clock is right twice a day.) CIO reveals a far more serious problem affecting Overstock's financials: A botched installation of Oracle software which has led to the restatement of five years' worth of earnings. In 2005, Byrne apologized to shareholders for a $14.2 million quarterly loss related to the troubled installation. Today's restatement suggests he was too busy chasing naked shorts to actually fix the problem. Why didn't he just blame it on the software all along?
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By Owen ThomasComment by SwetaCadiwampus: Owen, Patrick Byrne lied to you in a Business 2.0 interview on March 1, 2002. See below: Owen Thomas asked: âAre you profitable?â Patrick... more » | 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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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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confonz
Oracle's OpenWorld conference closes with Treasure Island party
Please welcome back ConFonz, the man who goes to technology trade conferences so Valleywag doesn't have to. The Conference Fonzerelli, a veteran of many OpenWorld conferences, thinks Oracle has pumped up its image this year. The show is much more huggy-touchy-feely-bloggery. Despite the fact that most Oracle employees of use are hiding under rocks. Quite a change from the days when Oracle at your door meant you were either out of a job, out of memory, or simply out of your mind. If anyone in the technology industry is wondering how to run a conference, this is the one to emulate. Oracle OpenWorld pulls 45,000 people, and twice as many service workers to support it. That's why Howard Street is closed and why you can't get a good picnic spot in Yerba Buena Park. More »
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By confonzComment by cv: This isn't Jezebel. That bag is ugly. And this post sucks. Like all Confonz posts. But that's just me... 1 Responses | 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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caption contest
Enabling intimate one to one customer relationships
Can't afford one of the "obviously scalable" ladies hanging out in the lobby of the W hotel during this week's Oracle convention? The Market Street Cinema has you covered — or, should I say, no-covered. Think up a better headline, leave it in the comments, and maybe you can dethrone actionhero11 who won for the second time in a row yesterday with "ConnectU's uniques spike 50%." (Photo by Jameth)
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By Jackson WestComment by BerthaAgrippa: Enabling Intimate One To One Customer Relationships 1 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 » -
stocks
Oracle profits up 28 percent — take that, Wall Street
Larry Ellison's database peddler saw profits in the most recent quarter jump to $1.08 billion, up 28 percent from the same period last year. As recently as 2006, Oracle got 12 percent of its revenues from banks, brokers, and insurers. Some of its best customers are bankrupt, while others are merging, a move which usually leads to cuts in tech spending. And yet so far Oracle seems unscathed by Wall Street's debt-driven crisis. Even so, free advice for Oracle's New York City sales office: Try the soft sell for a change. [WSJ]
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By Owen ThomasComment by Churchill: Hey Larry, nobody cares about you anymore. The 90's are calling, they want you back! LOL more » | Other threads
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stocks
10 tech stocks to watch as Lehman disappears and AIG totters
When it became obvious over the weekend that investment bank Lehman Brothers would finally fail and that no one was going to rescue it, Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain realized the market's reaction today would tank his company as well. So Thain met with Kenneth Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, and the pair reached a deal to sell Merrill Lynch to Bank of America for $44 billion. Which is, you might recall, around the price Microsoft wanted to pay for Yahoo. Of course, that kind of offer won't be coming for Yahoo again any time soon. While not so severely or directly, Lehman Brothers' collapse and insurance giant AIG's tottering on the brink will affect your tech portfolio today. Before this morning's open the company's stock was already down 3.83 percent on premarket trading. Watch Yahoo and nine other tech stock's continuing destruction or — dare you hope? — miraculous resilience on live stock charts below. More »
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Comment by ResearchZilla: these are negligible changes, excluding aig - but loading this many charts is a huge browser burden.... 3 Responses | Other threads
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exits
VMware shares sink underwater with crew fleeing and sharks circling
New CEO Paul Maritz, formerly of Microsoft, may have just taken the helm of a sinking ship in VMware. CEO Diane Greene was unceremoniously ousted by chairman and CEO of corporate parent EMC Joe Tucci last month, leaving no women navigating any top Valley companies. Her husband, cofounder and fellow sailor Mendel Rosenblum to whom Tucci offered the CEO job and a board seat, has now officially resigned; product development VP Paul Chan soft-quit and will be gone by October; and VP of R&D Richard Sarwal moved to competitor Oracle last week (where, thanks to a recent California court decision, he does not have to honor any non-compete agreements). More »
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By Jackson WestComment by giddieup: google should take a good lock at this. this is what happens when a one trick pony company loses the... 2 Responses | Other threads
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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 » -
hires
Oracle names Jeff Epstein to Ellison-proof CFO position
It took Oracle two years, but they've finally hired a CFO to replace Greg Maffei, who left the company after less than a year on the job in 2005. Maffei himself replaced Harry You, who also lasted less than a year. Before You, Jeff Henley held the position for ten years. Oracle co-president Safra Catz handled CFO duties since 2005. A source told the Wall Street Journal nobody wanted the job because unlike at most company's, Oracle's CFO has to report to Larry Ellison's No. 2, Catz, instead of the CEO himself. Come on — anyone who passed up the job for that reason is a moron! More »
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Comment by Passerby: This brings to mind a vaguely familiar scene from a movie I saw once hrmmmm yes here it is..... "You are... more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Netflix crash caused by botched Oracle upgrade
How did Netflix end up with massive delivery delays? "Because of massive database corruption in their Oracle cluster caused by a botched upgrade," according to a tipster. But don't blame Oracle (or Microsoft), necessarily. The tipster believes Netflix's own database adminstrators who bungled the upgrade. Why not just roll back the system? More »
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By Jackson WestComment by Brian_Sullivan: Even if you have a valid backup, it may not be potitical to 'restore' it. Many transactions may have been... more » | Other threads
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discrimination
Oracle looking for programmers — no experience necessary, or wanted!
No olds allowed. That's the unspoken HR mantra of Web startups — but the noisomely discriminatory practice seems to be spreading to some of the Valley's largest companies. Valley engineers are clucking over a job listing posted to a list run by the Software Development Forum. In it, an Oracle recruiter advertised a laundry list of required technical skills — but then noted that only "fresh grads" could apply, due to what seems to be an unofficial policy at Oracle: "We have multiple openings for our newly formed EBS Integrations group at Oracle but we have a restriction to hire only fresh graduates from outside." Companies from Microsoft and Google regularly make a practice of hiring engineers right out of college. They are younger, healthier, and more pliable — less costly in every way. But can Oracle legally advertise a job, but then reject a qualified applicant because they're not a "fresh grad"? It seems unlikely, but I'd welcome thoughts from HR experts in the comments. Oracle's job listing: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by socialjustice: I agree that Oracle is pathetic in their salaries and other stuff, that;s why I left it a while ago.... more » | Other threads
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Tim the IT Guy
Oracle lawsuit kills off its cut-rate competition
On Monday, spokespeople for software megalith SAP announced that SAP would shut down its software support subsidiary, TommorrowNow, which PC World called "a rising star in third-party maintenance and support for Oracle enterprise applications such as Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards." The fatal bullet: A lawsuit from Oracle that claimed TomorrowNow employees had downloaded confidential data and software from Oracle. SAP decided there wasn't enough left to save. More » -
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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great moments in pr
To push Yahoo deal, Google's dumpster-diving lobbyists recycle talking points
In the '90s, Washington PR firm Chlopak Leonard Schechter pushed anti-Microsoft information that its client, Oracle, had obtained through hiring investigators to rifle through garbage. Now working for Google, Chlopak is taking a greener approach: It's reusing Google-friendly quotes already aired in the press as fill-in-the-blank quotes for other journalists. Chlopak flack Rob Haralson does not note that the quotes, which support Google's proposed deal to take over Yahoo's search advertising, mostly come from Google executives or lawyers speaking anonymously. Still, Haralson may not be acting as strategically as he thinks. The quotes portray the deal, which is facing antitrust scrutiny in Washington, as no more significant than a supplier providing parts to a PC maker. That may not be a particularly good analogy — has Haralson ever sat in on an Intel negotiation? Google's recycled arguments: More » -
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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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) -
explainer
Why should you care about Google's App Engine?
Now that the announcement of Google's App Engine is official, it's opening up the company's cloud computing infrastructure as an API platform for Web application developers. Basically, it binds computing power, storage and database tools — much like Amazon.com's EC2, S3 and SimpleDB, respectively, but all tied together into one package. Plus, for the first 10,000 beta users at least, it'll be completely free up to a certain level of usage. What's in it for Google? More »
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By Jackson WestComment by ron_paulite: i agree with scalawag. this thing smells fishy. it will be somewhat proprietary. Google wants to... more » | Other threads
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wantrepreneurs
Jon Fisher desperately wants you to know he sold a company to Oracle
Meet Jon B. Fisher, former CEO of three software companies, including security firm Bharosa. In the clip above, Mark Cannice of the University of San Francisco asks Fisher if he regrets selling Bharosa to Oracle. Fisher does not. He tells us, "Bharosa returned 6X to investors in 3 years." Given Bharosa raised $2 million and that a company at its stage typically sells 25 percent of the company to outside investors, figure Fisher sold to Oracle for maybe $48 million. It's decent bank, but we're starting to wonder if Fisher — not a Bharosa founder — didn't get enough equity for himself before the sale. More »
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Comment by NarcissBuster: Ralph! It sounds like the author knows Jon well-The headline was right on. I am surprised there was no mention of... more » | Other threads
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earnings
Oracle earnings and sales up big, but still not enough for the Street
Oracle's quarterly profit rose 30 percent while revenue climbed 21 percent and margins improved — but the stock is down almost 10 percent in after-hours trading. Why? Growth fell short of expectations. Let this be a lesson to anyone thinking about taking a company public — I'm looking at you Mark Zuckerberg — the public is very unforgiving. You can't rest on your laurels. Companies must come up with new ways to make money that are both profitable and sexy. It's not enough to, as Oracle did, merely buy your competitors.
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Comment by Kravis: I order a 6 diamond girl and you bring me a 4! Heads will roll. 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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filthy rich
Mark Zuckerberg and 46 others make up the Bay Area billionaires list
Who's the richest billionaire in the Bay Area? No surprise here: Oracle founder and yachting enthusiast Larry Ellison, is the 14th wealthiest in the world (which must grate on him something fierce) with $25 billion. Trailing him are a trio of Googlers, Larry and Sergey with almost $19 billion each and CEO Eric Schmidt with $6.6 billion. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the youngest billionaire is pegged at $1.5 billion and outgoing eBay CEO Meg Whitman, one of only 99 women on the list, has $1.3 billion. Other local billionaires include Steve Jobs, Charles Schwab and George Lucas. Grab the full list from Forbes.
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Comment by MrMedia: Zuckerberg is worth whatever he has in his checking account. Until he cashes out, don't bother worrying about what... 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.
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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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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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bea
BEA has told its employees not to blog about the software maker's impending merger with Oracle. For the record, we stand with BEA management on this one. BEA employees, why go through the trouble of blogging when you can just send us tips and let us take care of it for you? [Docu-Drama] -
quotable
Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry on Oracle's purchase of BEA Systems: "Contacts tell us that Oracle delayed giving yearly raises to its employees for a quarter to fund the acquisition, which indicates seriousness on Oracle's part to have the acquisition done." [Epicenter] -
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. -
acquisitions
Oracle and Sun attack the stack
Oracle has acquired BEA for $8.5 billion. Sun has acquired MySQL for $1 billion. These events are not coincidence. Oracle, which already makes a database, wants to add BEA's software on top of that database. Sun, which makes application servers and other software which connects to databases, wants to slip MySQL in underneath that layer. It all adds up to what geeks and software salesmen call a "stack," or a complete package of interconnecting programs. More » -
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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explainer
Amazon.com's SimpleDB is perfect for your stupid Web 2.0 startup
Those not initiated in the mysteries of databases, i.e. most of us, may think that Amazon.com's new SimpleDB service is competition for established databases from Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM. It's not. Nor is it, in the lofty language of Web-computing evangelists, a "cloud-based" alternative to large Web databases. But it's probably a perfect match for your stupid Web 2.0 startup, which makes it a genius move by Amazon. More »
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By Tim FaulknerComment by mblevin: How many web 2.0 startups *need* complex data models, and how many of them are perfectly happy with basic scalability? I'd... 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] -
acquisitions
BEA Systems will share financials and other internal data with shareholder Carl Icahn in an attempt to convince him that BEA is worth more than the $17 per share that Oracle had offered in an unsolicited takeover bid. BEA has not filed a quarterly report with the SEC in over a year because of an investigation into possible backdating of stock options. [WSJ]
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Sat Jul 11
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