“I think the HP break is what is pushing Oracle over the edge. … [L]osing HP meant it really wasn’t competitive with IBM anymore, and instead of turning it into a more efficient weapon, Sun turned Oracle into a dud. Its customer lock-in on the Oracle side is offsetting what otherwise might be a disaster, but now having to face both HP and IBM has proven daunting, particularly since it appears EMC, Cisco and SAP are aligning to attack it as well.”
– Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst, Enderle Group (tech commentators)
“Chris O’Brien of SiliconBeat drew on the advice he gave former CEO Carol Bartz three years ago: For Yahoo to ’Go social’ and compete head-on with Facebook. But three years is a long period in Internet time, and Ms. Mayer’s options for turning Yahoo around will be even more limited than those available to her predecessors.”
– Maryam Nabi, blogger, FT.com
“Online giants don’t always take sides publicly, but it’s OK for one former Google executive [Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg] to congratulate another former Google executive [Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer]. Big G’s two most prolific female executives are now working at Google competitors, and that’s interesting.”
– The Motley Fool staff
“I moved to the center of the tech industry from New York City last year, and I have never experienced anywhere quite like the Valley. The money here is obscene. … Everyone here introduces themselves as an ‘entrepreneur.’ … This belief that everyone is an entrepreneur has a stultifying effect. It can drive founders to seek an easy acquisition instead of a quest for true innovation and a sustainable, profitable business — a truly entrepreneurial challenge.”
– Nick Bilton, blogger, New York Times