Bill Gates As Moby Dick

from the white-whales dept

A News.com column about very smart, very successful technology executives who have done very stupid things in their obsessive attempts to beat Bill Gates. The article focuses on Ray Noorda, Larry Ellison, and Scott McNealy. All three, have (or had) a weird obsession with challenging Microsoft, and all three have had (and may have again) failures in those attempts. I wonder how much of it is just testosterone? If you want to prove how smart you are, why not take on Bill Gates? No one takes as much notice when you beat down on smaller tech companies. Sure, Oracle has done okay, but no one says Ellison is a management genius for taking on Sybase and Informix.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 18 Nov 2001 @ 1:04pm

    They left out Dave!!!

    What about good ol' uncle Dave Winer at www.scripting.com?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    Mike (profile), 18 Nov 2001 @ 7:49pm

    Re: They left out Dave!!!

    Is Dave considered a "successful" and "very smart" technology exec? ;)

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.