I don't know that it's fair to say that Oracle has survived the test of time; their core business has been on a steady decline for years; now they are playing c

I don't know that it's fair to say that Oracle has survived the test of time; their core business has been on a steady decline for years; now they are playing catch-up in cloud and are talking about second derivative growth like they were an undergrad startup. The fact is that they have not grown their top line for five years(1), 70% of their business is in a dying sector and they have opted to cut R&D spending in favor of stock buybacks and dividend payouts for years(2). I don't see how they can change course; their investors keep asking for dividends while the bulk of their competitors are either privately owned or public with strong founder/owners; point being Oracles competitors are controlled by investors that want R&D spending, Oracle is not, and Oracle sorely needs R&D to build a portfolio that'll keep them from being yet another leveraged buy-out.. (1) https://ycharts.com/companies/ORCL/revenues (2) http://marketrealist.com/2016/12/oracles-share-buybacks-dividend-trend-will-run-2017/