1 HN user recommended this commentary1 month2012–2023score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN mostly cites it as an ironic bit of history, since Oracle later pivoted hard to the cloud.
A short clip of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, speaking to financial analysts in September 2008, questioning what cloud computing even means. He calls it a fashion-driven buzzword.
“Larry Ellison, of all people, nails it” (HN, 2013)
Funny to see how frequently the word "grid" is sprinkled into that blog post. Now we use "cloud" the same way. It illustrates how silly the industry gets about using/abusing whatever the latest buzzword is. Larry Ellison, of all people, nails it: [this video]
Having read the article it refers to how Oracle in the early days of Cloud said it was was crap in far different words and now offer a cloud solution. "Ellison has come a long way in a short time on cloud computing. In 2008, when cloud hype was rapidly inflating, Oracle's chief rightly highlighted the term's relativity and meaninglessness, skewering Silicon Valley's mindless recategorising of everything as "cloud". Saliant part being: "At that time, Ellison reckoned he couldn't see how Oracle could change what it was making or selling in order to capitalise on cloud: "I don't understand what we have to do different, other than change the wording on some our ads," he said ( [this video] )." Having heard that original insight on youtube I don't blame him/Oracle, he does make some good points back then and now for a `database` vendors perspective. Now they have got the head around there hardware Sun purchase things have changed.
Quote Larry Ellison in 2008: What the hell is cloud computing? [this video] "The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion driven than women's fashion."
[this video] Should have had an ellipsis between the 2nd and 3rd bit, but the intent wasn't altered. He's calling it gibberish and nonsense. I wasn't trying to imply that he actually was confused, I was trying to show how he thought the term was gibberish. I mean, who would take seriously the thought that Ellison actually thought of himself as an idiot.
Larry Ellison thought the cloud was a "fashion driven" software buzzword fad in 2008 [1][2], a miss as big as Ballmer with the iPhone. The cloud will ultimately probably kill off Oracle. > The Oracle chief executive told shareholders at the company's annual meeting Friday that the technology is a fad that doesn't have a clear business model, despite the fact that Google , Microsoft and practically every other tech company is singing its praises. > "I think it's ludicrous that cloud computing is taking over the world," Ellison told about 100 shareholders who attended the meeting at the software maker's headquarters. "We think it's very hard to make money in this thing." [1] [this video] [2] [link]
Funny to see this now, when thinking about a response he gave to the question 'what the hell is cloud computing', way back in ~2009: "it is the most nonsensical .. maybe I'm an idiot, it's really just complete gibberish..." [this video]
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
6 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Citations, criticism and jokes
Read more
Read more