In a recent Mercury News interview, Larry Ellison, chairman and chief executive of Oracle, opines on lots of things, but to we Mac users, his most interesting comments are those about his “best friend,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
Ellison said that one of the worst mistakes in computing history is when Jobs was fired from Apple.
“You watch him create Apple, then in one of the worst human-resources mistakes in the history of Silicon Valley — the only thing worse was when the French fired Napoleon — they fire Steve Jobs and Apple almost completely disintegrates,” he said. “Then he comes back and he saves a company that was on life support.”
Ellison said that Jobs is “one of the most remarkable people on the planet.” In answer to a question from Mercury News reporter Peter Delevett about the Apple CEO’s rumored temper, the Oracle CEO said the two once almost decided to wear T-shirts that said “The Mercurial Steve Jobs” and “The Arrogant Larry Ellison.” (If there’s anyone in the computing industry as controversial as Jobs, it’s Ellison.) He added that Jobs is a “hero.”
“You know, we live in a very egalitarian world,” Ellison told the Mercury News. “We don’t like heroes. And Steve is one of these heroic guys whose accomplishments are of such epic proportions, and it gnaws away at our egalitarian sense of the world.” (Thanks to our friend and colleague, David Leishman, for the heads-up on this item.)