A History of Tech CEOs Talking Smack About Their Rivals

Ain't no love in the tech game.

Sep 11, 2013
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Complex Original

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Complex Original

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Some might say the tech game is like the rap game—no matter the fame, fortune, or success a CEO achieves—drama is bound to follow. Since the early ‘90s, the industry’s brightest and most innovative visionaries have verbally slandered their adversaries over business, ethical, or personal matters. Some chose to play it smooth like Jay Z and keep it subliminal. Others got into 50 Cent mode and named names. Like your beef served well done? From competitive threats to life-time frenemies, here's a History of Tech CEOs Talking Smack About Their Rivals.

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Money Ain't A Thing

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Date: 1993

Target: Bill Gates

Shot fired: “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me...Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful...that's what matters to me.” —Steve Jobs

The Apple co-founder wasn't afraid to speak his mind with the Wall Street Journal regarding frenemy Bill Gates, sending a subliminal shot to the Microsoft kingpin targeting his life ambitions and wealth. How ironic that Gates would go on to found his own non-profit charity organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one year later.

Jealous One's Envy

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Date: July 14, 1994

Target: Bill Gates

Shot fired: “He is divisive. He is manipulative. He is a user. He has taken much from me and the industry.” —Gary Kildall

Word is Kildall held resentment over Gates actions to produce a variant of his popular CP/M operating system, which turned out to be QDOS, and license it to IBM. So the software pioneer proceeded to bash the PC billionaire in his unpublished Computer Connections memoir before passing away in '94. RIP!

Kharma Comes to Collect

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Date: April 20, 1995

Target: John Sculley

Shot fired: "John Sculley ruined Apple and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt and corrupted some of the top people who were there, drove out some of the ones who were not corruptible, and brought in more corrupt ones and paid themselves collectively tens of millions of dollars and cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place—which was making great computers for people to use."—Steve Jobs 

Everyone knows the backstory between Steve Jobs and former Apple CEO John Sculley. Once Sculley exited the company, our favorite tech visionary decided to kill his adversary with kindness scathing remarks exposing the exec's dirty laundry during an interview with the Smithsonian Institute. Payback's a mutha!

McNealy Patronizes Ballmer

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Date: circa late '90s/early '00s

Target: Steve Ballmer

Shot fired: "When Steve Ballmer calls me wacko, I consider that a compliment."—Scott McNealy

To say the Sun Microsystems CEO disliked Steve Ballmer would be a complete understatment. He made it a life mission at times to attack the Microsoft exec back then. So in response to Ballmer's jab implying he was looney, McNealy took the condescending route. Well played!

"Dropped Acid"

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Date: Jan. 12, 1997

Target: Bill Gates

Shot fired: “Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas…He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”—Steve Jobs

On top of considering the Microsoft capo to be "weirdly flawed as a human being," Jobs felt drugs would have opened up his archrival's imagination and made him more copious.

Michael Dell's Sarcastic Side

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Date: May 17, 2001

Target: Steve Jobs

Shot fired: “All I got to say to Mr. Jobs is I loved Toy Story 2.”—Michael Dell

Unhappy with Jobs comments about Apple’s iBook being better than Dell’s portable laptop, Michael Dell took the liberty of mocking his rival’s former position as CEO of animation studio, Pixar. One of the rare occasions when Dell's CEO showed some personality.

"Ballmer and Butt-Head"

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Date: circa late '90s/early '00s

Targets: Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates

Shot fired: "Ballmer and Butt-Head"—Scott McNealy

As much as he couldn't stand his former college bud at the time, McNealy loathed Bill Gates even worse. So it came as no suprise when he referenced (and rebranded) the duo as MTV's most popular cartoon series. How clever.

Larry Ellison Gets at HP's Leo Apotheker

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Date: Oct. 26, 2010

Target: Leo Apotheker

Shot fired: "A few weeks ago I accused HP's new CEO, Leo Apotheker, of overseeing an industrial espionage scheme centering on the repeated theft of massive amounts of Oracle's software. A major portion of this theft occurred while Mr. Apotheker was CEO of SAP." —Larry Ellison

Oracle’s chairman is what you would call the epitome of a badass. During his battle with rival SAP, Ellison stated he could prove HP’s newly appointed CEO supervised a scheme to steal his company’s software. Only problem was Leo Apotheker had just left the country on business. After Apotheker refused a subpoena to attend court, Ellison verbally buried him every way possible. 

Ballmer Calls Eric Schmidt a "Pussy"

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Date:  2004

Target: Eric Schmidt

Shot fired: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."—Steve Ballmer

No one in the biz has a hotter temper (or foul mouth) than Ballmer. According to a report from Vanity Fair, dude spazzed and hurled a chair at an engineer leaving for Google, while implying CEO Eric Schmidt was soft.  We'd love to hear what he might have called Steve Jobs upon hearing the news of an employee joining Apple.

Netgear CEO Rails Jobs' Ego

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Date: Jan. 31, 2011

Target: Steve Jobs

Shot fired: "Steve Jobs wants to suffocate the distribution so even though he doesn't own the content he could basically demand a ransom…What's the reason for him to trash Flash? There's no reason other than ego."—Patrick Lo

Tight over Steve Jobs' criticisms of Adobe’s Flash technology and his company’s “closed” iOS business model, the Netgear chairman called out Apple’s luminary for putting his ego first over business. And he did so after Jobs left the company on sick leave. Classy.

No, I Created NetSuite

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Date: May 30, 2012

Target: Marc Benioff

Shot fired: “I started NetSuite. NetSuite was my idea. I called up Evan Goldberg and said, 'We're going to do ERP on the Internet, software-as-a-service.' Six months later Marc Benioff, finding out what NetSuite was doing, and kind of copied it."—Larry Ellison

Ask Oracle's self-applauding leader who was the brains behind the cloud-based business software suite and he'll say it definitely wasn't SalesForce.com CEO Marc Benioff. As the industry continued crediting Ellison's protege for the invention, your boy took the liberty of putting people onto the backstory of how it all began. NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson has vouched for Ellison. 

Bill Gates Fires Back

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Date: Jan. 21, 2007

Target: Steve Jobs

Shot fired: “If you just want to say, "Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along," that's fine. If you’re interested, [Vista development chief] Jim Allchin will be glad to educate you feature by feature what the truth is. … Let’s be realistic, who came up with "File/Edit/View/Help"? Do you want to go back to the original Mac and think about where those interface concepts came from?”—Bill Gates

Clearly fazed by Apple’s massive profit surge and the “I’m A Mac” commercials, which portrayed the PC giant as inferior, Microsoft’s chairman finally grew a pair and took aim at the company’s biggest rival and its co-founder. Not only did he satirize Job’s pop culture influence, but Apple’s creative ingenuity. Get mad, bro.

"Lee-o" or "Lay-o"

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Date: May 30, 2012

Target: Leo Apotheker

Shot fired: "I'm not going to call him Lay-o."—Larry Ellison

Two years after Apotheker avoided Oracle’s legal drama by flying out to Mongolia on business, AllThingsD editor Kara Swisher brought up the subject with Ellison during his D10 on-stage interview. Looking to add some humor to the convo, Swisher corrected Ellison’s pronunciation of the HP CEO’s first name by saying, “It's Lay-o,” to which he responded with the remark above: smirk intact.

Ellison Calls Google Regime Thieves

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Date: Aug. 13, 2013

Target: Larry Page

Shot fired: "The only guys I have trouble with are the Google guys…Larry [Page] specifically. He runs that company. I think what they did was absolutely evil, [and I] 100 percent [blame] Larry Page."—Larry Ellison 

As if his shit list wasn't loaded enough, Ellison took aim at Google's co-founder during an interview with CBS’ Charlie Rose—claiming Page acted "evil" by stealing Oracle's technology to utilize the Android platform. This should be the first of many tirades to come.

Bill Gates Disses All Space Exploration Tech CEOs

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Date: Aug. 16, 2013

Targets: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson and all others who apply

Shots fired:  “Everybody’s got their own priorities. In terms of improving the state of humanity, I don’t see the direct connection. I guess it’s fun, because you shoot rockets up in the air. But it’s not an area that I’ll be putting money into.”—Bill Gates

The philantrophic billionarie criticized his tech peers for spending their leisure time on less humanitary causes. Would you agree with him?

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