Google Cloud CEO Called Oracle Cloud ‘A Disgrace’
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian is on record as calling his former employer’s cloud offerings “a disgrace.”
Oracle is currently facing an inventor lawsuit, filed by Union Asset Management Holding AG. The lawsuit alleges that Oracle mislead investors regarding the success of its cloud business and that it bullied customers into paying for cloud licenses they didn’t want to artificially inflate the business. The lawsuit also accuses Oracle’s former co-CEOs, as well as Kurian himself, of dumping the stock at inflated prices based on their firsthand knowledge of how bad the cloud business really was.
According to The Register, the complaint says: “Oracle was largely unable to sell its defect-ridden cloud technology in bona fide transactions, as very few customers actually wanted to buy it. Yet the Company had to show burgeoning cloud sales in order to remain viable in the eyes of investors.”
As part of the amended complaint, the plaintiffs included emails from Kurian, who was head of product development, to other Oracle executives. In one such email, to EVP Steve Miranda and other executives, Kurian said the following:
“I want to make sure that the entire HCM dev organization understands what a disgrace your UI is and stop living in denial on that,” Kurian wrote.
“I continue to get extraordinary pressure from our two CEOs and LJE himself that the UI is not tenable – that state is your collective responsibility and we should avoid pretending that there is not an issue … the core product UI is awful.
“Until you all collectively accept the mess you have made and the need to move quickly we are talking past one another.”
The release of these emails certainly sheds light on why Kurian abandoned Oracle in favor of being CEO of Google Cloud and will no doubt play a role for companies considering whether to go with Oracle’s offerings.
