The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison

Wilson, a journalist, wrote an unauthorised biography of Larry Ellison and a history of Oracle from its 1977 founding through the mid-1990s.

The business material covers Oracle's origin in Edgar Codd's relational database papers, which IBM published and did not commercialise quickly, and Ellison's decision to build a product on them; the aggressive sales culture that made the company grow extremely fast; the 1990 crisis, in which revenue recognition practices that booked sales before they were realised produced a restatement, a share price collapse of about eighty percent and shareholder litigation; and the recovery under new financial management.

The revenue recognition episode is the most instructive part for investors. Oracle's sales organisation was compensated on bookings, contracts were written with terms that made the revenue uncertain, and the accounting recognised it anyway. The result was reported growth that was not real, followed by a correction when the receivables did not collect.

Wilson wrote without cooperation and the portrait of Ellison is unflattering throughout, covering the personal life, the disputed biographical claims and the litigation extensively.

The reference has not verified the specific claims in this account. The book is from 1997 and predates Oracle's applications business, the acquisitions of the 2000s, the cloud transition and Ellison's later career. Its value is the account of the growth-at-any-cost sales culture and the accounting crisis it produced.