Word: ellisons
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...Dallas high school jazz combo desperately improvises to kill time in an auditorium packed with local school-board members, education bureaucrats and fidgety students. The guest of honor, Lawrence Ellison, 55, is running a little late. Ellison is CEO and founder of the Oracle software company. And today at least, with his stock holdings outrunning those of Microsoft's Bill Gates, Ellison is the richest man in the world. His jet has just touched down at Love Field. So the combo plods on, trying to fill another 20 minutes...
Just as the drummer is about to launch into yet another solo, the tall, gaunt, goateed Ellison sweeps down a stairwell to the side door of the auditorium, trailing a retinue of blond female publicists. He pauses a moment so that he is backlighted in the doorway, bending toward one of his attendants and asking if his wide forehead looks too shiny in this light. He acts like a rock star about to step on stage...
This event, like so much of Ellison's life these days, can be read two ways. On the one hand, it is a grand gesture: the donation by Oracle of 1,100 New Internet computers to the Dallas public-school system. But it is also a flagrant attempt to hype a pet project of his: the inexpensive network computer. This particular model is built and sold by NIC, a company partly owned by--who else?--Ellison. Later, on a CNN feed from a high school social-studies classroom against a backdrop of a few of the donated computers, Ellison will...
...Ellison is not a man to shy away from his own Smithian self-interest, and he believes the profit motive could be the best tool for solving the world's problems--more effective than government or private philanthropy. "Which did more for the world?" he asks. "The Ford Motor Co. or the Ford Foundation?" He shakes his head. "That's an interesting question...
...tech circles, opinion on Dumpstergate is mixed. Microsoft's critics were forgiving. "While what Ellison did was distasteful, the facts that were exposed were despicable," says J. Michael Washe, founder of the website Breakupmicrosoft.org But many neutral parties were worried that the tech industry was stooping to new lows in skulduggery. "It's not the kind of use of resources anyone can be proud of," says Ruben Barrales, president of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, a nonprofit economic-development organization...