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

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) [0]: https://www.oracle.com/corporate/ https://www.oracle.com/corporate/ [1]: https://www.hp.com/us-en/hp-information.html?msockid=28a3ae72afbe61a72170bc0dae0d6025 https://www.hp.com/us-en/hp-information.html?msockid=28a3ae7... [2]: https://investor.apple.com/our_values/default.aspx https://investor.apple.com/our_values/default.aspx [3]: https://about.google/company-info/commitments/ https://about.google/company-info/commitments/ [4]: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/about-nvidia/careers/diversity-and-inclusion/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/about-nvidia/careers/diversity-...