Re: Oracle buys Innobase

Thomas Hallgren wrote:

> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 17 Oct 2005, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
>>
>>>
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>>>> I think Oracle will buy MySQL too eventually
>>>
>>>
>>> No, MySQL AB is a private company and would probably never
>>> sell to Oracle.
>>>
>>>> They started with InnoDB because that is likely to lower the
>>>> price tag of MySQL
>>>
>>>
>>> You seem to misunderstand the power and wealth of Oracle. The cost of
>>> buying MySQL AB would be insignificant to them.
>>
>>
>> Not only that, "potentially crippling" MySQL by pulling InnoDB out
>> from under them would not only reduce MySQL's worth, but also has a
>> massive potential of reducing their marketshare, long term.
>>
> And in what respect would that be negative for Oracle? There will be
> enough customers stuck on MySQL to make a purchase worth while anyway,
> reduced market share or not.
>
> Oracle has two ways of making money from the InnoDB acquisition:
> 1. They charge for InnoDB licenses and thereby remove MySQL's profit.
> MySQL will probably die if they do this and their customers will seek
> alternatives. I think PostgreSQL is a far more likely alternative then
> Oracle. Especially if Oracle is the one who provokes the change.
> 2. They buy MySQL and charge the customers what they are charged
> today. Everyone is happy and Oracle just expanded their customer base.

#2 could be done after #1. Depending on the way Oracle proceeds, they
might be able to do this without pissing off the community too much.

An extreme (and illegal) example of this sort of behavior was when AT&T
executives used to provide a list of telco's they were interested in
purchasing to J.P. Morgan and then J.P. Morgan would make sure their
loans were called, bankrupting comptetitors, so AT&T could purchase them
for pennies on the dollar (this was a major part of AT&T's earlier
antitrust case, which resulted in a consent decree in 1956).

>
>
>> Until MySQL has to re-negotiate their contract with
>> Inno^H^H^H^HOracle, its all speculation though ... don't know when
>> that comes due, but their might be enough time between now and then
>> for MySQL to recover on their own (ie. come up with an alternative to
>> InnoDB) ...
>>
> In which case Oracle would gain nothing from its purchase of InnoDB. I
> don't see that as a very likely scenario.

I think that MySQL was blindsided by this. Just a little before this,
they said that they wanted to be the Ikea of the database market in part
because they didn't want to attract Oracle's attention...

Best Wishes,