Gates=code, Ellison=deals

Ellison is busy spending his cash, while Gates is sitting on close to $40 billion. Referring to Oracle's appetite for big acquistions, Gates said: "Larry [Ellison] forecast big consolidation, and he wanted to see that come true, so he's making it come true. It's a brilliant forecast. If the next three people under you don't write code but they do deals, what do you get? You get deals. They will probably do more deals than anybody, and we'll write more code than anybody." An oversimplification. Oracle is going to be busy trying to fuse all the various code bases is has acquired into a new platform, and Microsoft at some point will make a big move. Remember when Microsoft was stalking SAP? As its share price remains stalled, and the big company bet won't ship until the end of 2006 or in 2007, Microsoft has to be on the prowl for a major acquisition, and it's not AOL.