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.

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.

Motorola Atrix

I reviewed Motorola’s Atrix smartphone in this week’s Tech Files column. What intrigued me about the Atrix are its accessories: one optional dock allows the device to turn into a quasi-laptop; another allows it to turn into a pseudo desktop PC or even an Internet-connected set-top box.

As I wrote in the review, I liked the Atrix and thought the idea of a dockable smartphone had a lot of potential. But I found the docks themselves expensive, underwhelming and their potential largely unrealized.

Since I wrote my column, a reader alerted me to another reason to dislike the docks.

One of the advantages of the docks is that with them, you can use a full version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser to surf the Web and pull up Web apps in much the same way you would on a standard PC. What I didn’t realize was that in order to use the full Firefox browser on AT&T’s data network, AT&T requires users to pay its extra $20 a month tethering fee. (H/T here to blog site These Are the Droids.)

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HP gadget guru Phil McKinney is among those who believe everyone will eventually own at least two or three computing devices, choosing according to individual needs from among PCs, smartphones and everything in between. Right now, though, it’s that sweet spot in between that companies like Hewlett-Packard are racing to fill, with new products that try to strike the balance between mobility and user experience.

That’s where HP’s recent acquisition of Palm and its webOS software comes in. McKinney, the chief technology officer for HP’s personal systems group, was careful not to reveal plans for specific products during a talk at the MobileBeat 2010 conference Monday. (And he managed to get through a 30-minute presentation without once mentioning Apple or its iPad by name.) But he reiterated that HP plans to use webOS for what most people are calling tablets — HP calls them “slate” devices — as well as for phones and printers.

While giving no sign that HP would dump Microsoft as the operating system provider for most of its PC business, McKinney’s comments were probably no comfort to Microsoft’s mobile software folks. “We see Windows having its segments of the market,” McKinney said. But when it comes to mobile devices, he added, rather than relying on third-party software, HP believes that success lies with providing its own “end-to-end experience.”

McKinney also repeated his recruiting pitch for independent app developers, who are crucial to HP’s plans for building popular adoption of webOS. Echoing comments he made in a video recently posted on Palm’s website, McKinney suggested developers should consider building apps for webOS because HP has the scale and resources to sell “tens or hundreds of millions” of webOS devices, to both businesses and consumers around the world.

I wrote on Monday about a problem with the camera system on Apple’s new iPhone 4 that was affecting users’ ability to not only take pictures but use FaceTime, the new video chat feature. My colleague Maria Avila helped me put together the video below that illustrates the issue. (H/t to another colleague, Greg Young, who helped me illustrate the FaceTime issue.)

FaceTime when the iPhone's camera doesn't work

You’ve heard about the yellow screen splotches and the wonky antenna that requires you to hold the new iPhone just right.

But now a new issue is coming to light: a faulty camera system that not only affects your ability to take pictures, it can foil your attempts to use FaceTime, the video chat feature that is the iPhone 4’s top talking point.

I ran into this issue over the weekend. Apple kindly sent me two iPhone 4s to test out. I’ve been trying to convince my wife that we need to upgrade our iPhone 3G’s to the new model, so I thought I’d show her how FaceTime works, figuring she’d be as wowed as I was when I tested it on a friend’s phone in the office.

But it didn’t work. While the phone I was using received my wife’s image, the small box that was supposed to display my image wasn’t showing anything. Meanwhile, on the phone my wife was using, she could only see her own image in the small box on her screen; she didn’t get any images from my phone. Read the rest of this entry »

Columnist Troy Wolverton has gotten his hands on an iPhone 4. Follow his reactions here. Note: If you’re having difficulty seeing the widget below you can check out Troy’s posts on Twitter @troywolv.