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Oracle Is Funding a New Anti-Google Group (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Fortune: Oracle says it is funding a new non-profit called "Campaign for Accountability," which consists of a campaign called "The Google Transparency Project" that claims to expose criminal behavior carried out by Google. "Oracle is absolutely a contributor (one of many) to the Transparency Project. This is important information for the public to know. It is 100 percent public records and accurate," said Ken Glueck, Senior Vice President of Oracle. Fortune reports: "Oracle's hidden hand is not a huge surprise since the company has a history of sneaky PR tactics, and is still embroiled in a bitter intellectual property lawsuit with Google." One would think Microsoft may be another contributor, but the company said it is not. Daniel Stevens, the deputy director of the CfA, declined to name the group's other donors, or to explain why it does not disclose its funders. Why does this matter? "When wealthy companies or individuals pose as a grass-roots group like the so-called 'campaign for accountability' project, [it] can confuse news and public relations, and foster public cynicism," writes Jeff John Roberts via Fortune.
Larry Ellison is likely pissed that Google managed to make a ton of money over the language that Oracle bought with Sun, but never managed to do anything with it. So go after Google. I also wouln't be surprised if Microsoft is involved. Microsoft likes to be a tough competitor but they don't like other tough competitors.
If you call them out on it then they can refute it. This is SCO tactics, and Oracle is going to milk it for as long as they can.
There couldn't have been a worse company to buy Sun, even Microsoft would have been preferable.
I think Oracle is probably just annoyed because after winning all of their big lawsuits against their own costumers, they lost what is arguably the mother of all of their lawsuits, and it wasn't one of their customers this time
The evil of Google is like a candle flickering in the darkness.
The evil of Oracle is like the midday sun.
I'm posting this as AC because I'm currently involved in the rollout of a big, bloated, expensive Oracle product at a major university.
They're a fucking shitshow through and through. No one knows what's going on. This thing is going to be delayed by at least a year or it's going to be rammed down our asses and be a catastrophe for 18 months or more. Billions will be lost in man-hours alone, and even in the best case scenario where it somehow magically works nothing will be gained. Instead, more staff will be required to support and coddle this beast.
I've intentionally avoided looking up how much we will be spending on this fucking thing or how it was approved because I know I won't like what I find out.
They have exceptional software engineering standards
Their search is good. Their advertising platform (for advertisers) is alright. Their operations team is top-notch. A lot of the other stuff is half-done. Android is barely sufficient (and has a lot of messiness, too).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Oracle, if you want to be total dicks to google but get tech people on side so we start giving a shit about you, here's an idea: build us a nice open source browser with no telemetry that blocks ads. Base it on Chromium. Make it fast and lightweight and strip out anything that might annoy privacy advocates (like syncing) and make it an optional extension.
Short of building a better search engine it's the only thing I could imagine making me try one of your products again.