Image via Complex Original
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
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
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 So the software pioneer proceeded to bash the PC billionaire in his unpublished Computer Connections memoir before passing away in '94.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
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
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"
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
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"
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
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"
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
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
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
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"
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
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
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?