Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! One of the world’s richest men, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, doesn’t like another one of the world’s richest men, Larry Page of Google. Larry Page is acting evil. Something about Java. Meh.
There are surreal moments in life when you realize that people who don’t have a billion dollars are going to eventually figure out that people who do have a billion dollars are just whiny, self-absorbed freaks who will never know the joys of the Jack in the Box Waffle Stack.
So, until we all gather up the pitchforks and head to Atherton to bag us some fat cats we can enjoy the petulance that will be rewarded by yet another zero being added to one’s bank balance. For you suckers, act up and someone is going to slap you on the side of the head.
So, why is Larry so upset at Larry. Well, he made it clear in an interview with Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes – they take Oracle Java and turns it into Android Java (yeah, no one cares). The video segment is after the quote and includes stuff about Steve Jobs and the NSA, too. It’s actually a good watch:
Larry Ellison, America’s third richest man and the CEO of tech giant Oracle, took aim at Google in a wide-ranging interview with Charlie Rose, calling out Google CEO Larry Page “specifically” for overseeing Google’s decision to “take our [Oracle’s] stuff.”
Oracle produces a widely-used database that operates web systems from online banking platforms to airline reservation systems. The company is currently locked in a legal battle with Google, and Ellison maintains that the online search giant used Oracle programming language without permission.
“We don’t compete with Google. We don’t do anything Google does. We just think they took our stuff and that was wrong. That’s a completely separate issue … I think what they did was — was– absolutely evil,” Ellison told Rose.
“Larry … makes the decisions over there. He runs that company. … And they decided, let me be very clear … When you write a program for the android phone, you write it. You use the Oracle tool, Oracle Java tools, for everything. And at the very end, you press a button and said, ‘Convert this to android format,'” Ellison said, explaining his issue with Google’s android phone development process.
Ellison clarified that Page — who is known for his personal slogan, “Don’t Be Evil” — “slipped up this one time” and said it was it was his actions, not necessarily Page himself, that were evil.
“This really bothers me,” Ellison continued, “I don’t know how he thinks you can just copy someone else’s stuff. It really bothers me.”
