SiliconBeat

Would Oracle CEO Larry Ellison seriously contemplate a hostile takeover of Hewlett-Packard?

Oracle and HP escalated their feud in the courts of law and public opinion this week, after a judge made several rulings in a dispute between the two tech giants over Oracle’s decision to stop making new software for HP’s high-end servers that use Intel’s Itanium chips.

HP fired first on Monday, trumpeting the fact that a Santa Clara County judge had thrown out Oracle’s claim that HP somehow committed “fraud” when it was negotiating a settlement with former HP CEO Mark Hurd, after HP sued Hurd for going to work for Oracle.

Oracle had argued that HP obtained the settlement agreement under false pretenses because HP had not revealed that it planned to hire two of Oracle’s arch-enemies, former SAP chief Leo Apotheker and former Oracle president Ray Lane, as HP’s CEO and board chairman, respectively.

Judge James Kleinberg agreed with HP that this did not constitute fraud. He also denied Oracle’s motion to keep sealed an HP document that contains some examples of Oracle’s hardball efforts to go after HP’s customers by portraying Itanium as a product line that’s nearing its end of life.

Oracle fired back by noting that the judge also agreed with Oracle’s motion to unseal its cross-complaint against HP, which offers up some details of what Oracle contends was an HP effort to hide Intel’s intentions regarding Itanium’s future.

As an example, Oracle maintains that HP negotiated a secret agreement in 2008 to pay Intel a whopping $440 million to keep making Itanium for another three generations of chips, and an additional $250 million under a later agreement, in order to make customers think that HP’s servers had a long-term viable future. HP has not confirmed the numbers but says in court papers that it’s no secret that it agreed to contribute to the chip’s development costs.

And then there’s another point that neither company mentioned in its press releases. In his order, Judge Kleinberg also denied HP’s motion to keep secret some details of the confidential agreement that HP negotiated with Hurd after he went to work for Oracle.

That agreement contained an 18-month “standstill” provision, during which Oracle agreed not to launch a hostile takeover bid for HP, according to the judge. Kleinberg said HP apparently feared that Hurd’s intimate knowledge of HP’s business would give Oracle an unfair advantage should it attempt such a bid.

HP may have sought the standstill agreement out of an abundance of caution; a spokesman declined comment. Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger said: “We viewed HP’s insistence on a standstill as hilarious, so we gave it to them.”

The case continues in Santa Clara County Superior Court.

Brandon Bailey writes about enterprise IT and other tech subjects. Contact him at bbailey@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5022.

Apple’s earnings report today was incredibly impressive. But as interesting to me as the record revenues and sales was just how much the company has changed in just a few short years.

As recently as seven years ago, Apple was at heart a computer that also had a sideline of digital music players. As recently as four years ago, you could make the case that Apple was a digital music company that also happened to sell computers.

Now, Apple is clearly a mobile phone maker who also happens to sell computing devices and, oh by the way, a few digital music players.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cisco launched a new media advertising campaign this week, and this one doesn’t feature the quirky, indie actress Ellen Page.

Instead, the networking giant is using stories about some of its customers, in business and industry, and how they’re using Cisco technology to boost their operations.

That’s in keeping with Cisco’s s new focus, after CEO John Chambers took the company through a much-publicized reorganization last year. He pulled the plug on some ill-fated forays into consumer tech, including Cisco’s attempts to sell handheld Flip cameras and a home video-conferencing system that Page had demonstrated in some jokey television spots last year.

After acknowledging that Cisco had spread itself too thin with those efforts, among other things, Chambers is now vowing to stay focused on a shorter list of commercial tech priorities - where his company is competing with the likes of IBM, HP and Oracle.

The new ads don’t specifically mention Cisco’s internal overhaul, but the campaign “is a reflection of what we’re doing from a corporate strategy perspective,” Cisco Chief Marketing Officer Blair Christie told me last week. She added, “We’re a B to B company.”

The ads still use the “human network” catch-phrase that Cisco first began promoting in 2006. The company won’t say how much the campaign will cost, but Christie said the effort will extend to US and overseas markets and will include a sizeable online component - including “homepage takeovers” on several news sites and a LinkedIn blast to 140,000 C-level executives at companies with which Cisco hopes to do business.

The ads will appear in places where business leaders are likely to be tuning in, which means a heavy roster of televised sports events and finance-oriented sites like CNBC or the Wall Street Journal.

The decision by co-founder Jerry Yang to resign from the Yahoo board is as sad as it is overdue.

No matter how rudderless Yahoo had become in recent years, Yang deservedly remains a Silicon Valley icon. He was there at the start of the Internet era, along with co-founder David Filo, building one of the first great Web businesses. It is a company that generated millions of dollars in wealth for founders and employees, created thousands of jobs, and helped pioneer the idea that the Web could be a place where businesses could be built.

In short, it’s nothing to sneer at. And if things had gone differently, it would be a career that people would be exulting today instead of softly mocking.

Had Yang taken this step several years ago, as many suggested, he might have moved into the role of Valley elder statesman. There could have been a graceful pivot to serving as a mentor or start-up advisor, angel investor or venture capitalist. Or perhaps even starting his own business. One could imagine him following the path that another Internet wunderkind Marc Andreessen has take to a new kind of prominence.

Instead, Yang made the ill-advised decision to try to fix an ailing Yahoo back in 2007 and became CEO. It was a short stint, but coincided with a hostile takeover bid from Microsoft that Yang helped thwart. In the mind of many investors, Yang will forever be villified as the person who lost them billions of dollars.

Yahoo continued to drift under his successor, Carol Bartz, and during the many months it took to find a new CEO after she was fired last summer. Meanwhile, the board agonized over how to chart a new course for the company.

Yang and Yahoo’s era had clearly passed, and the longer he remained involved, the harder it would be for the company to make a dramatic break from its past and move forward. If recently hired CEO Scott Thompson is to have any hope of moving the company forward, he needs a clean slate. More importantly, employees and shareholders need to have faith that he is in charge of strategy and decision making.

That means that while Yang was the first to leave the board, he hopefully won’t be the last. There were already rumors swirling Tuesday that there would be more departures from the board. Let’s hope that’s true. This has been one of the worst boards in Silicon Valley. And chair Roy Bostock, one of the board’s longest serving vets, who has overseen the hiring of three CEOs, needs to be the next to head for the exits.

Other long-time members should also probably step down, including Gary Wilson, a general partner at, Manhattan Pacific Partners (2001); and Arthur Kern, an investor and former radio executive (1996). This would give Yahoo an opportunity to bring in four fresh, dynamic voices who could help Thompson envision a way forward for a company that still has so many tantalizing assets and remains one of the most visited sites on the Web.

Yahoo has attempted to reboot several times over the past decade and stumbled each time. Just because the company keeps getting another chance, doesn’t mean it will continue to do so. This could well be the last chance the company has to seize the future and restore itself to glory.

It’s an opportunity that it can’t afford to waste by holding on to anything — or anyone — from its past.

Facebook has topped Google’s Orkut to become the top social network in Brazil, the world’s fifth largest country and Internet market, comScore will announce later today. That’s a huge win for Facebook, because Brazil for years has been a stronghold of Google’s Orkut social network.

The switch reflects Facebook’s rapid growth in much of the developing world, particularly in South America and Asia, countries that are now providing the lion’s share of Facebook’s growth, with membership approaching the saturation point in countries like the U.S. and Britain.

Here’s my story on that topic:  http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_19723521

comScores said that in December 2011, Facebook.com attracted 36.1 million visitors, a 192 percent jump in traffic over the previous  twelve months, meaning it passed Orkut, even though  – to surpass Orkut as the leading social networking destination in the market.

In an early view of the release later today, comScore said:

“Facebook’s rapid ascent in the Brazilian market has certainly been one of the most interesting stories to develop during the course of 2011,” said Alex Banks, comScore managing director for Brazil. “Brazil has always been a particularly social market and currently owns the fifth largest social networking population in the world. But despite the cultural affinity for social media, Facebook adoption had traditionally lagged in the market. That has all changed in the past year, during which the site has tripled in audience size as engagement has grown sevenfold to assume the leadership position in the market.”

- Mike Swift

Twitter clearly views Google’s new social search features, which highlights postings by the searcher’s Google+ friend connections, as a direct threat to its bread and butter - - serving as the default place on the Web where people go to learn about breaking news, whether it comes from an individual or a news organization.

Tuesday, within hours after Google announced its new “Search - Plus your World” service, Twitter complained in a written statement released to the media that:

Search example from Twitter general counsel, Alex Macgillivray

Macgillivary’s Tweet linked to an example of a Google search. He is saying, essentially, is that a person searching  Google for “@wwe”, the Twitter account of the professional wrestling organization, will instead now be steered to Google+ content.  The Twitter account result was there, but it was well down the page.

It will be interesting to see watch whether Twitter takes things to the next level and files a formal complaint with the FTC. Twitter spokesman Matt Graves declined to comment Wednesday afternoon.