Steve Jobs’ revenge from Oracle vs. Google

“Larry Ellison, the outspoken and brash chief executive of Oracle Corp., is always full of surprises,” Therese Poletti reports for MarketWatch. “This week, as one of the primary witnesses in Oracle’s lawsuit against Google Inc., he might even be surprising himself.”

“With Oracle alleging Google’s Android software infringes on its intellectual property, Ellison has become an unwitting avenger for his friend, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs,” Poletti reports. “Jobs, investors may remember, told author Walter Isaacson many things for his biography, Steve Jobs before he died last year. One of his more passionate diatribes was on the topic of Google, and how Android copied many features of Apple’s iPhone and its iOS software. Jobs vowed he would ‘destroy Android, calling it a ‘stolen product.'”

Poletti reports, “‘I will spend my last dying breath, if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,’ Jobs told Isaacson. ‘I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this,’ he said, even if he had to use all of Apple’s cash in the process… The case is also turning out to be a way for Ellison to seek some revenge against Google on behalf of Jobs, unwitting as it may be. Jobs is continuing to haunt Android, in more ways than one.”

Read more in the full article here.

23 Comments

  1. Editor 1: This story about Oracle v. Google is boring.
    Editor 2: Why don’t we put Steve Jobs’s name in it and make it about how he called Android stolen?
    Editor 1: Brilliant!

    1. If you think Cook is a wussy, you are a very, very poor observer. Don’t confuse his Southern Gentleman approach with a lack of resolve, especially when it comes to something that was dear to Steve. And as MDN has pointed out, there is more than one way to kill Android – and that includes pricing it out of existence with licensing fees.

  2. Know what I’d like to go thermonuclear on? The appalling ad bloat on every page of this site, compared to the waif-like amount of actual news content, most of which is just quoted verbatim from elsewhere.
    Out of every page a whopping 46% of space is taken up with ads.
    News content? On average just 3.5%, and even that is infected with god-awful link words.

    Time for MDN to be weeded out of my RSS list…

      1. Actually, I have, but it’s for cheapskates who want to view content without giving a site owner any ad revenue, which is why I don’t use it.
        I have no problem with ads but the balance is completely out here. It’s like The Loop used to be before Jim and Peter saw the light.
        I’ll take my page views to a site that has more respect for its audience. And fewer right-wing nutzoids in the comments.

  3. Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison were long-time friends – both iconoclasts in their own way. I don’t think there is anything “unwitting” about this. Oracle has to defend its IP, but Larry made this suit a priority, has refused thus far to settle, and is clearly out to crush Android with it. Since Google and Oracle don’t directly compete, it is reasonable to assume that a fair amount of this vengeance is Larry’s tribute to his late friend.

    Ellison is a samurai dickhead, but in this case, he exactly the right guy for the job(s).

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