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Technology Stocks : Oracle Corporation (ORCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul van Wijk who wrote (11919)	9/16/1999 10:50:00 AM
From: Bipin Prasad	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19079

ot How late do you stay up everyday to monitor US market? Just curious. InSook Prasad

To: Paul van Wijk who wrote (11919)	9/16/1999 12:35:00 PM
From: Hardly B. Solipsist	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 19079

> Brilliant programmers are very important, vision is what it is > really about. 600 brilliant programmers killed netscape within > 2 or 3 quarters. Have no idea about the browsermarketshares at > this moment, but let's say MSFT won the war! Part of being a brilliant programmer is vision. I don't want to start a big argument, but Netscape was killed by a lack of business plan (and MSFT), not by the programmers. One reason that I turned down a job there just-pre-IPO (which as it turned out probably wasn't the smartest financial decision I ever made) is that I couldn't see how the company was supposed to make money. So if you want to blame someone for Netscape's failure, you probably should start at the top. On the other hand, LE has admitted that Oracle's current strategy is due in part to the fact that engineers inside his company developed software that made the strategy feasible before upper management was aware of it. He was quoted as saying that he wished that he could say that it was part of some overall plan, but the work was done before anyone at the top knew about it. That said, the best engineering work in the world, even driven by a clear vision, won't go anywhere unless the company can mobilize behind it, and that requires upper management than can take that vision and develop it, articulate it, and sell it. As long as LE is at Oracle I think that they can do this (although I'm not sure that anyone else in upper management there can do more than hold Larry's coat), and I don't see signs that anyone at MicroSoft can do this. But MSFT does have more than half of what it takes to win, and it's easier to bring a visionary in at the top than to assimilate the pool of engineering talent, build a good marketing department, and accumulate more than $20B in cash, so I wouldn't get complacent about MSFT's current state if I were running ORCL.