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>Oracle could literally wipe them off the planet if they were inclined. Oracle has a $113B market cap. google has a 155b market cap. granted, both those numb

by lsc 16y ago

>Oracle could literally wipe them off the planet if they were inclined. Oracle has a $113B market cap. google has a 155b market cap. granted, both those numbers are large, but Google's is significantly larger. how many google Engineers do you think it would take to build a rdbms that is significantly better than Oracle's product? It's well within Google's capabilities. And yeah, it'd be a patent shitstorm, but it's not like google lacks patents or lawyers. I mean, granted, oracle is primarily a sales company, so simply coming out with something better, for free, won't kill them overnight. But it would significantly hurt them. Could Oracle write a search engine? No. the idea is just silly. so Oracle would be limited to legal maneuvering in their attempt to overcome google. I just don't see it happening.

pclark 16y ago
I think you've missed a large factor. The leadership. And who they are. For example, Eric Schmidt is apparently a super nice guy [1] Larry Ellison on the other hand, has cited (I believe, Ghengis Khan?) "It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail" So the leadership is drastically different in terms of how they work. Ellison is marine corp, Schmidt is peace corp. Could Google make a rdbms that is significantly better than Oracle? On paper, sure. But Google isn't doing a great job (yet) at obliterating markets that are entrenched (Sharepoint, Outlook, Exchange, Facebook) so it's unlikely Google has the willing (due to leadership) or management (due to internal reasons, I guess) to crush Oracle. I think if Oracle wanted to squeeze Google, they probably could actually. Google has made more and more enemies over the past few years, and I think if someone such as Ellison stepped in and decided to lead the blood hounds, it could be interesting. Obviously this is all hilarious speculation, but it's pretty interesting. [1]: http://www.slate.com/id/2250704/ http://www.slate.com/id/2250704/
- lsc 16y ago
  >For example, Eric Schmidt is apparently a super nice guy [1] Larry Ellison on the other hand, has cited (I believe, Ghengis Khan?) "It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail" See, while I think that would make it /much/ harder for a little guy to go up against ellison than agains schmidt, being as oracle is /smaller/ than google, I don't think aggression is enough to tip the scales. the thing is, aggression only helps you if you have the ability to take down your enemy. I don't think Oracle has the ability to threaten google's core revenue generating stuff, search, adwords and adsense. Oracle is an enterprise software company, and google is a consumer software company. Completely different markets. I think either one will do poorly breaking in to the other's market. my point with the rdbms is that there's something relatively simple (well, relatively simple if you have Google's Engineering resources) google could do to hurt oracle. Now, obviously, for it to really hurt Oracle, it'd need to be marketed by companies that can market to the sort of people who spens money on Oracle, e.g., not google. but, if you release something awesome under a loose enough license, that's what happens. Other people will take the tech, relabel it, and start selling it. Look at all the companies that took ZFS and started selling network-attached storage devices. (granted NetApp is now using it's patents in an attempt to stop that sort of thing... like I said, there would be a legal shitstorm... but it is cutting in to NetApps core market.) The interesting thing about just releasing a RDBMS is that it's a not-very aggressive, very nerdy way to get revenge. it doesn't require Schmidt to talk about blood or anything, just releasing some really cool new software. Now, it would be really hard to actually kill oracle, but hurt it a little, in it's core business? yeah, I think Google releasing an open-source, loosely-licensed Oracle-quality and scale RDBMS under a permissive license would slowly do just that. Hell, I've personally watched managers debate Oracle vs MySQL... and many of those debates were close. many more would have ended up on the MySQL side if Oracle didn't have some significant technical and reliability advantages. My understanding is that Google's core business and nearly all their revinue comes from adwords, adsense, and search. My understanding is that everything else is just fucking around- e.g. gmail doesn't make them money (this may be wrong these days, but gmail is certainly small potatoes compared to adwords and adsense.) There's no way Oracle could put a dent in google's dominance in that area. Just like google wouldn't be able to market to enterprises like Oracle does, oracle doesn't know how to sell to consumers, technical barriers aside... and for Oracle, the technical barriers would be enormous. Oracle is used to customers willing to go spend an order of magnitude or two over the cost of commodity disk on storage. In the search market, you have to very carefully write your software so that it can work okay even though it is running on the cheapest and least reliable hardware you can find. (One of my past jobs was dealing with the flaky hardware at one of the larger search clusters.) I guess my main point is that I can see how google could contribute to others chipping away at Oracle's core business... I don't see how Oracle could contribute to anyone chipping away at Google's core business.
nkassis 16y ago
But Oracle is more profitable and earns more revenues. Market Cap means nothing here. Oracle doesn't need to make a search engine, they have Oracle + Sun's patent, they could make it impossible for Google to build a computer and run software on it with enough lawsuits. Only IBM in my view could survive a patent attack like this.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- lsc 16y ago
  > Oracle doesn't need to make a search engine, they have Oracle + Sun's patent, they could make it impossible for Google to build a computer and run software on it with enough lawsuits. Only IBM in my view could survive a patent attack like this. if that's true, then yeah, google is in trouble. I'm certainly not qualified to speculate about legal issues. Still, the question in my mind would be: "how many of those patents would stand up to determined scrutiny from a well-funded and very motivated team of competent Engineers and Lawyers?
tzs 16y ago
> Oracle has a $113B market cap. google has a 155b market cap. granted, both those numbers are large, but Google's is significantly larger Market cap doesn't translate into assets that can be used in a fight. Some more relevant comparisons: Oracle: 115000 employees, Google: 22000 employees. Oracle: $27 billion revenue, Google $24 billion revenue. Oracle: $9 billion operating income, Google $8 billion operating income. Oracle: $60 billion total assets, Google $40 billion total assets. > Could Oracle write a search engine? No. the idea is just silly. Considering that a single determined programmer can make a great search engine (duckduckgo.com), I find it hard to believe that among all of those 115000 employees, Oracle would not be able to find a few who could make a good search engine.
- lsc 16y ago
  >Oracle: 115000 employees, Google: 22000 employees. yes, but Oracle is /very/ sales and corporate support (sales) heavy. those people will not help you build a search engine, at least not a search engine with Google's target customers and business model. Now, 'enterprise search' for internal stuff? Oracle could do that. Oracle might even be able to get corps to pay for a subscription-based 'search for corporations' that cleaned up most of the porn and more shady spam. but they couldn't do an ad-based search targeted at everyone, like google does. If nothing else, most people are aware that google knows everything about you, and uses that knowledge to serve you ads. this only works because people, by and large, trust google to not go too far overboard. >Considering that a single determined programmer can make a great search engine (duckduckgo.com), I find it hard to believe that among all of those 115000 employees, Oracle would not be able to find a few who could make a good search engine. do you think duck duck go will last after it becomes worth spammer time to game them? I've said before that the search engine market has something of a negative barrier to entry; your job is /much/ easier while you are small enough that most spammers ignore you. Another problem oracle would have is that Oracle isn't cheap. the are used to environments where you can shell out one or two orders of magnitude more than you would for commodity disk to get a really nice storage unit. Running a search engine is all about making the cheapest hardware that could possibly work run without going down when a bit of hardware crashes in a weird way. Overcoming this cultural bias towards "buy good stuff" is pretty difficult. Then, they will have to face a set of technical challenges they are not used to facing. There are a whole lot of problems that go away when you decide to pay for a really high quality storage unit. I mean it's so bad that I pay 2x as much per gigabyte so I can have "enterprise' sata and not worry about most of those problems. Judging from, say, s3 prices (at scale, its $0.037 per gigabyte for four copies of the data, if my information is correct, which it might not be) it's quite possible that the big players use hard drives that are even more prone to failure than the consumer-grade drives that I have access to.

by lsc 16y ago

pclark 16y ago

I think you've missed a large factor. The leadership. And who they are. For example, Eric Schmidt is apparently a super nice guy [1] Larry Ellison on the other hand, has cited (I believe, Ghengis Khan?) "It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail" So the leadership is drastically different in terms of how they work. Ellison is marine corp, Schmidt is peace corp. Could Google make a rdbms that is significantly better than Oracle? On paper, sure. But Google isn't doing a great job (yet) at obliterating markets that are entrenched (Sharepoint, Outlook, Exchange, Facebook) so it's unlikely Google has the willing (due to leadership) or management (due to internal reasons, I guess) to crush Oracle. I think if Oracle wanted to squeeze Google, they probably could actually. Google has made more and more enemies over the past few years, and I think if someone such as Ellison stepped in and decided to lead the blood hounds, it could be interesting. Obviously this is all hilarious speculation, but it's pretty interesting. [1]: http://www.slate.com/id/2250704/ http://www.slate.com/id/2250704/

lsc 16y ago
>For example, Eric Schmidt is apparently a super nice guy [1] Larry Ellison on the other hand, has cited (I believe, Ghengis Khan?) "It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail" See, while I think that would make it /much/ harder for a little guy to go up against ellison than agains schmidt, being as oracle is /smaller/ than google, I don't think aggression is enough to tip the scales. the thing is, aggression only helps you if you have the ability to take down your enemy. I don't think Oracle has the ability to threaten google's core revenue generating stuff, search, adwords and adsense. Oracle is an enterprise software company, and google is a consumer software company. Completely different markets. I think either one will do poorly breaking in to the other's market. my point with the rdbms is that there's something relatively simple (well, relatively simple if you have Google's Engineering resources) google could do to hurt oracle. Now, obviously, for it to really hurt Oracle, it'd need to be marketed by companies that can market to the sort of people who spens money on Oracle, e.g., not google. but, if you release something awesome under a loose enough license, that's what happens. Other people will take the tech, relabel it, and start selling it. Look at all the companies that took ZFS and started selling network-attached storage devices. (granted NetApp is now using it's patents in an attempt to stop that sort of thing... like I said, there would be a legal shitstorm... but it is cutting in to NetApps core market.) The interesting thing about just releasing a RDBMS is that it's a not-very aggressive, very nerdy way to get revenge. it doesn't require Schmidt to talk about blood or anything, just releasing some really cool new software. Now, it would be really hard to actually kill oracle, but hurt it a little, in it's core business? yeah, I think Google releasing an open-source, loosely-licensed Oracle-quality and scale RDBMS under a permissive license would slowly do just that. Hell, I've personally watched managers debate Oracle vs MySQL... and many of those debates were close. many more would have ended up on the MySQL side if Oracle didn't have some significant technical and reliability advantages. My understanding is that Google's core business and nearly all their revinue comes from adwords, adsense, and search. My understanding is that everything else is just fucking around- e.g. gmail doesn't make them money (this may be wrong these days, but gmail is certainly small potatoes compared to adwords and adsense.) There's no way Oracle could put a dent in google's dominance in that area. Just like google wouldn't be able to market to enterprises like Oracle does, oracle doesn't know how to sell to consumers, technical barriers aside... and for Oracle, the technical barriers would be enormous. Oracle is used to customers willing to go spend an order of magnitude or two over the cost of commodity disk on storage. In the search market, you have to very carefully write your software so that it can work okay even though it is running on the cheapest and least reliable hardware you can find. (One of my past jobs was dealing with the flaky hardware at one of the larger search clusters.) I guess my main point is that I can see how google could contribute to others chipping away at Oracle's core business... I don't see how Oracle could contribute to anyone chipping away at Google's core business.

nkassis 16y ago

But Oracle is more profitable and earns more revenues. Market Cap means nothing here. Oracle doesn't need to make a search engine, they have Oracle + Sun's patent, they could make it impossible for Google to build a computer and run software on it with enough lawsuits. Only IBM in my view could survive a patent attack like this.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
lsc 16y ago
> Oracle doesn't need to make a search engine, they have Oracle + Sun's patent, they could make it impossible for Google to build a computer and run software on it with enough lawsuits. Only IBM in my view could survive a patent attack like this. if that's true, then yeah, google is in trouble. I'm certainly not qualified to speculate about legal issues. Still, the question in my mind would be: "how many of those patents would stand up to determined scrutiny from a well-funded and very motivated team of competent Engineers and Lawyers?

tzs 16y ago

> Oracle has a $113B market cap. google has a 155b market cap. granted, both those numbers are large, but Google's is significantly larger Market cap doesn't translate into assets that can be used in a fight. Some more relevant comparisons: Oracle: 115000 employees, Google: 22000 employees. Oracle: $27 billion revenue, Google $24 billion revenue. Oracle: $9 billion operating income, Google $8 billion operating income. Oracle: $60 billion total assets, Google $40 billion total assets. > Could Oracle write a search engine? No. the idea is just silly. Considering that a single determined programmer can make a great search engine (duckduckgo.com), I find it hard to believe that among all of those 115000 employees, Oracle would not be able to find a few who could make a good search engine.

lsc 16y ago
>Oracle: 115000 employees, Google: 22000 employees. yes, but Oracle is /very/ sales and corporate support (sales) heavy. those people will not help you build a search engine, at least not a search engine with Google's target customers and business model. Now, 'enterprise search' for internal stuff? Oracle could do that. Oracle might even be able to get corps to pay for a subscription-based 'search for corporations' that cleaned up most of the porn and more shady spam. but they couldn't do an ad-based search targeted at everyone, like google does. If nothing else, most people are aware that google knows everything about you, and uses that knowledge to serve you ads. this only works because people, by and large, trust google to not go too far overboard. >Considering that a single determined programmer can make a great search engine (duckduckgo.com), I find it hard to believe that among all of those 115000 employees, Oracle would not be able to find a few who could make a good search engine. do you think duck duck go will last after it becomes worth spammer time to game them? I've said before that the search engine market has something of a negative barrier to entry; your job is /much/ easier while you are small enough that most spammers ignore you. Another problem oracle would have is that Oracle isn't cheap. the are used to environments where you can shell out one or two orders of magnitude more than you would for commodity disk to get a really nice storage unit. Running a search engine is all about making the cheapest hardware that could possibly work run without going down when a bit of hardware crashes in a weird way. Overcoming this cultural bias towards "buy good stuff" is pretty difficult. Then, they will have to face a set of technical challenges they are not used to facing. There are a whole lot of problems that go away when you decide to pay for a really high quality storage unit. I mean it's so bad that I pay 2x as much per gigabyte so I can have "enterprise' sata and not worry about most of those problems. Judging from, say, s3 prices (at scale, its $0.037 per gigabyte for four copies of the data, if my information is correct, which it might not be) it's quite possible that the big players use hard drives that are even more prone to failure than the consumer-grade drives that I have access to.