The Difference Between God And Larry Ellison*: Inside Oracle Corporation - Hardcover

Wilson, Mike

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688149251 ISBN 13: 9780688149253

Publisher: William Morrow, 1997

Synopsis

Draws on interviews with Ellison's friends and enemies, as well as Ellison himself, to create a portrait of the self-made billionaire who founded Oracle, the second largest software company in the world, with a $1,200 investment. Details growth of the company and financial mismanagement that came close to driving the company into bankruptcy, and tells of Ellison's exploits in sports and romance. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

About this title

About the Author

Mike Wilson is an editor at the St. Petersburg Times and the author of the acclaimed Right on the Edge of Crazy: On Tour with the U.S. Ski Team. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Reviews

An authorized biography of Oracle's founder and brash billionaire leader. Ellison, the adopted son of a Jewish couple from Chicago, seems to specialize in reinventing himself. By all accounts, he grew up on middle-class South Shore Drive, but he has told reporters that he lived in the South Side ghetto. He was an uninspired student who never received a college degree but would maintain something of an obsession with the University of Chicago and imply he had an advanced degree in physics. Ellison is also an indifferent student of language but has arranged his home with all the trappings of a Japanese lord, and a few boats and helicopters to boot. These grand inconsistencies--delightful to some, horribly irritating to others, including many former employees--go a long way to explaining Ellison's unbelievable success at marketing his Oracle database software, used by thousands of companies. One employee, a devout Mormon named Rick Bennett, even considered his ubiquitous software akin to ``an instrument of God'' and believed Ellison pivotal to modern-day Mormonism. Wilson, an investigative reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, wisely focuses much of the attention on Ellison's one-sided feud with Bill Gates (who views Ellison as something of a gadfly but doesn't mention his name at all in his book, The Road Ahead) and documents his obsession nicely. He also does a fair job of explaining Ellison's vision for the NC, an inexpensive computer that provides quick access to the Internet and stores all of its software on a network server, rather than on a hard drive. While some in the computer business see the NC as the future computer for schools, many others see it as a $500 empty box and a poor attempt to topple Microsoft. While the title is the funniest line of the book, this is an engaging, humanizing look at a Silicon Valley megalomaniac. (8 pages b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688149251
• ISBN 13: 9780688149253
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 385