http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/larry_ellison_o_1.html

Larry quoth:

“The underlying engineering teams are so good, but the direction they got was so astonishingly bad that even they couldn’t succeed,” said Ellison. “Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.”

Sorry, Larry, I must disagree; yeah Sun’s leadership messed up in a pile of ways, but one thing that blogging assured was that when Sun was bought it was worth ~$7 billion rather than ~$25 million.

Why? Because the product marketing teams had closed-down, because communications of the engineering excellence you vaunt were Nil, and because there was no strategic direction that would have fixed any of that along with legion other issues.

At least with blogs.sun.com you could read Phipps, Cantrill, Bonwick – and a score or two of other key engineers – all talking about what’s coming, what’s important, and why it would be valuable.

Without that you would have bought Sun a lot more cheaply… oh, yes, of course.