Ellison accuses Google of acting ‘absolutely evil’

Larry Ellison has a history of attacking rivals' top executives. Picture: Getty

“We just think they took our stuff, and that was wrong,” Ellison said in an interview with Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning broadcast yesterday.

When asked if he thought Page was evil, Ellison replied: “I think what they did was absolutely evil.”

Google, which uses the motto “don’t be evil”, declined to comment on Ellison’s remarks.

Ellison accused Google of using Oracle’s Java programming language to develop its Android mobile operating system. “And at the very end, you press a button and [say], ‘convert this to Android format’,” he said. Oracle has sued Google over the issue.

Page joins a long list of technology executives who have been lambasted by Ellison, including former Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates, Salesforce.com chief Marc Benioff, SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner, as well as Hewlett-Packard’s entire board and former chief executive Leo Apotheker.

During the interview, which CBS said took place last week, Ellison addressed a wide range of subjects, including the future of Apple without the late Steve Jobs and the controversy over the US National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance programmes.

Ellison called the NSA’s collection of data “absolutely essential” for the government to ferret out potential terrorists and said it would be alarming only if the data is used to do political targeting. The US government is one of Oracle’s biggest customers.

On Apple, Ellison said that without his “best friend” Jobs, who died in October 2011, the maker of iPhone handsets and Mac computers would not be as successful.

“I like Tim Cook,” he said about Apple’s current chief executive. “I think there are a lot of talented people there, but Steve is irreplaceable.”