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Oracle spied on Microsoft's allies
By Duncan Martell, Reuters
28 June 2000
Oracle Corp., the world's second-biggest software company, acknowledged that it
hired a private detective agency to investigate allies and groups that support
Microsoft Corp., the world's biggest software firm.
Oracle said that it hired Investigation Group International to look into the activities of
the Independent Institute and the National Taxpayers Union, seeking to uncover
links between Microsoft and the groups during Microsoft's antitrust trial, Oracle said
in a statement.
Microsoft was found to be a monopoly which broke U.S. antitrust laws.
"Oracle discovered that both the Independent Institute and the National Taxpayers
Union were misrepresenting themselves as independent advocacy groups, when in
fact their work was funded by Microsoft for the express purpose of influencing public
opinion in favour of Microsoft during its antitrust trial," Oracle said in a statement
obtained by Reuters.
The move by Oracle, which said in its statement that it "insisted" that IGI's tactics
be legal, highlights the acrimonious and long-standing rivalry between Oracle, the
world's biggest maker of database software, and Microsoft , whose Windows
operating system powers more than 80 percent of the world's personal computers.
Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison has long been a bitter critic of Microsoft Chairman
Bill Gates and Microsoft's competitive tactics in the marketplace.
Oracle added that it retained the firm to show that Microsoft supported these trade
groups and other groups financially and to show that these groups were
disseminating purportedly independent surveys and studies that supported
Microsoft's position during its historic antitrust trial.
Microsoft condemned Oracle's involvement in hiring IGI.
"This is dramatic proof that Microsoft's competitors have been funding and
orchestrating a massive PR and lobbying campaign in an effort to tarnish
Microsoft's image and invite government intervention in an industry that has been
very competitive and serving consumers very well," Microsoft spokesman Mark
Murray told Reuters.
"We think it's a very sad day and a huge embarrassment for Oracle and all its
employees."
The financial ties between Microsoft and these organisations, including the
Association of Competitive Technology, were previously reported by the Wall Street
Journal and the Washington Post.
Oracle has, in the past 18 months, curried favour among analysts and investors as
a credible threat to Microsoft as the world moves more and more to computing
power and software applications residing on powerful computer servers and
accessed through a simple Internet browser.
"Left undisclosed, these Microsoft front groups could have improperly influenced the
outcome of one of the most important antitrust cases in U.S. history," Oracle said
in its statement.
Oracle confirmed its retention of IGI after newspaper reports said that the detective
agency attempted to bribe janitors to buy trash from the Washington-based
Association for Competitive Technology. IGI was unsuccessful in trying to pay two
janitors $1,200 for the trash, media reports have said.
Ellison, with the surge in Oracle's stock price in the last year and a half, has
recently challenged Gates for the moniker of the world's richest man.
While Oracle admitted it hired IGI to investigate the conduct of the Independent
Institute and the National Taxpayers Union, it did not admit to an investigation of the
Association for Competitive Technology.
Oracle, when it hired IGI, did not "specify how IGI should go about gathering
information," the Oracle statement said. "We did however insist that whatever
methods IGI employed, those methods must be legal."
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