The next generation of business leaders for most companies is inthe same meetings with Oracle's salespeople. They will pick "solutions" for business over their IT staff's opinion. Oracle thinks like them, the IT staff doesn't.

But most people don't want technology. I don't want a website or any complicated stuff - I want to communicate with and see what my friends are doing (facebook). I don't need an amzingly clustered spider and ranking engine, I just want to find sutff (google). I don't want to talk about feeds and speeds, I just want a computer that "works" (apple). I don't want to talk with some IT Nerd about how Open Source software is superior and about technological lock-in, I just want a positive ROI and want to grow my business (Oracle).

// Oh - and HN's favourite -- I just want to play Bingo with my students.

Last I heard though, Oracle was generating mountains of spare cash. The sort of profits they can lay their hands on can buy a lot of Next Big Things to let others take the initial risk and then sell out to Oracle when they're more established.

(Which, from what I understand, isn't far from what Google has done, with the bulk of non-search success having been from acquisitions.)

Well, okay. but for a CEO the business comes first, developer comfort second. If it can't meet business objectives (which oracle certainly can) it doesn't matter how much developers love it.