I truly wander what exactly is Oracle’s game here. They don’t have true AI expertise. Their software is horrible. Consumer-facing product competency is nonexistent. They have no competitive advantage to speak of and somehow we expect them to compete with companies that have top-notch talent in these areas and a real track record of execution?
rogerrogerr•1mo ago
I'm reminded of the talk where the "Larry Ellison is like a lawnmower" meme came from. One of the things the presenter (who was acqui-hired, IIRC) said was that Oracle's "company mission" is to make money. Full stop. Not to improve people's lives through whatever - just to make money.
That kind of corporate clarity might be a sort of competitive advantage? But yeah, you have a point that on the level we can see there doesn't seem to be much that differentiates them.
(Compare Oracle's about page[0] - a single pithy phrase, and then a bunch of "look how much money we make" numbers, to others: HP[1], Apple[2], Google[3], Nvidia[4] are the first four that I thought of; they have a notably different flavor)
They have a much better and more ahem active contract/corporate law department than your average start up, that's for sure. Become the sole keeper of all the data a small - midsize business has, and that's a nice little extortion scheme you can keep up for quite a long while...
seanhunter•1mo ago
This is it. They will try to sue more of their existing customers until they become profitable again, knowing that firms who haven’t migrated already are obviously stuck and can be squeezed for all they are worth.
For people who think I’m exaggerating. If you’ve ever been any kind of tech manager in a mid-sized company with a title that sounds remotely infra-related you are constantly (by which I mean at least once per week) contacted by service companies offering “help with your Oracle audit”. Even if you don’t have Oracle.
That is, their appetite for this extortion is so voracious that it has spawned an ecosystom of pilot fish who swim with the sharks and offer to “help” victims manage them.
avrionov•1mo ago
Their game is survival. Their original data business is under heavy attack from smaller companies and the cloud providers. They had to pivot somewhere and the cloud business looks like a natural direction for them. They play the role of the disruptor here. They offer significantly lower traffic fees than the rest. That's why they attracted Zoom and similar companies which require high traffic.
Daishiman•1mo ago
rogerrogerr•1mo ago
That kind of corporate clarity might be a sort of competitive advantage? But yeah, you have a point that on the level we can see there doesn't seem to be much that differentiates them.
(Compare Oracle's about page[0] - a single pithy phrase, and then a bunch of "look how much money we make" numbers, to others: HP[1], Apple[2], Google[3], Nvidia[4] are the first four that I thought of; they have a notably different flavor)
[0]: https://www.oracle.com/corporate/ [1]: https://www.hp.com/us-en/hp-information.html?msockid=28a3ae7... [2]: https://investor.apple.com/our_values/default.aspx [3]: https://about.google/company-info/commitments/ [4]: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/about-nvidia/careers/diversity-...
digdugdirk•1mo ago
seanhunter•1mo ago
For people who think I’m exaggerating. If you’ve ever been any kind of tech manager in a mid-sized company with a title that sounds remotely infra-related you are constantly (by which I mean at least once per week) contacted by service companies offering “help with your Oracle audit”. Even if you don’t have Oracle.
That is, their appetite for this extortion is so voracious that it has spawned an ecosystom of pilot fish who swim with the sharks and offer to “help” victims manage them.
avrionov•1mo ago