Rival Offers Plan to Break Up Microsoft
Lawrence Ellison, the chairman of Oracle Corp. and a frequent critic of Microsoft, suggested Tuesday that the software giant be broken into three identical pieces--with identical products--and set in competition with each other.
Speaking at a news conference during Oracle’s OpenWorld gathering at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Ellison said that simply splitting off individual products from Microsoft would be pointless because each product, such as the Windows operating system, would still have monopoly status.
“It’s like a science-fiction movie,” he said. “You cut the monster in half and you have two monsters.”
Ellison said that three identical Microsoft companies, each striving to produce their own version of Windows, Microsoft Office and the Internet Explorer browser, would restore competition to the industry to the benefit of consumers.
“You could have Billsoft and Stevesoft competing with each other,” Ellison said, referring to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and President Steven Ballmer. “The only remedy is to create competition. . . . Let them compete on innovation.”
Ellison, whose database software firm is the industry’s largest company after Microsoft, took his swipes amid Microsoft’s latest campaign to cast itself as an innovator victimized by a government witch hunt.His comments came after U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, presiding over the landmark antitrust trial, issued his finding that Microsoft is a monopoly that has used its position to stifle competition.
Oracle, based in Redwood City, Calif., has focused its strategy on “Internet computing”--moving programs and data away from Microsoft’s domain of desktop PCs.
