In the early days of China's reform and opening up, Western countries have achieved significant development advantages, and many foreign enterprises have taken advantage of technological advantages to enter the Chinese market and gradually form monopolies, which has caused certain pressure on the development of Chinese enterprises.
Among them, a well-known American company has dominated the Chinese market for 30 years, and its founder even made it clear that China cannot be allowed to train more engineers than the United States, so he refused to train Chinese employees.
However, now that the company has been forced to withdraw from the Chinese market and completely lost, what happened in the meantime?
When we think of "oracle bone inscriptions", the first thing that comes to mind is the ancient and deep Yinxu script, which is the earliest systematic script in East Asia and even in the world. But for another group, "Oracle" is more of an American giant, a symbol of cutting-edge, high salaries, decency and monopoly.
Oracle, known as Oracle in English, was once the world's largest enterprise-level software company and was known as the "pioneer of pure software companies". It is headquartered in Redwood Beach, California, United States, and its founder is the legendary Larry Ellison.
Born in 1944, Ellison was raised by his uncle and aunt in Chicago. Although his performance in middle school was mediocre, at the age of 22, he resolutely embarked on the road of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley.
He worked for several companies in Silicon Valley and rose to prominence in the development of Oracle databases. It was in this process that he discovered Kold's relational database theory, which he considered the key to his success.
So, in 1977, he and his colleagues founded a database company called "Software Development Lab".
A year later, the company developed a relational database system codenamed Oracle 1. However, due to a large number of flaws, this software failed to be officially launched in the market.
In 1979, Ellison released "Oracle No. 2", which was the first commercial relational database management system developed by a pure software company in the history of computer software, and was finally adopted by the United States.
As the "Oracle" database grew in popularity, even surpassing the company itself, Ellison decided in 1982 to officially change the company's name to "Oracle," which became known today as Oracle.
After Oracle's IPO, with an annual turnover of $55 million, the company's revenue soared to $1 the following yearWith $3.1 billion, it has successfully become the fourth largest software company in the world.
Ellison is a very flamboyant man, and wherever he goes, he has to stay in the most luxurious hotels and use the best things, as if this will prove his success.
He treats competitors without mercy, and often uses vicious competition, forced takeovers and other means to attack opponents, but the biggest opponent in his heart always surpasses him. He firmly believes that his biggest rivals are Bill Gates and Microsoft.
After his success, he always wanted to beat Microsoft and make Oracle the world's leading software company.
Ellison, the founder of Oracle, has always regarded Microsoft and Bill Gates as rivals, and he has not only publicly criticized Microsoft and Gates' monopolistic behavior, but also privately fought with him to get rich.
To prove his financial credentials, Ellison has built the world's largest private yacht and luxury villa, and is investing hundreds of millions of dollars each year to support the world's top sailing fleet.
Despite their global success, especially their 30-year monopoly in the Chinese market, Ellison and Oracle have never been able to surpass Microsoft.
In the field of personal computers, Microsoft Corporation is the company that makes the most money from software sales. Despite this, Oracle, as a leader in the computer software industry, has made a lot of money in the Chinese market.
In 1989, Oracle began to cultivate the Chinese market, at that time, China's socio-economic and technological level had not yet reached the best state, especially computer technology, lagging behind the world's advanced level.
However, Oracle's "database" technology quickly took over the Chinese market and showed a strong influence.
In the era when big data was not yet popular, databases have been deeply attracted to domestic computer companies. For computer software companies and Internet companies, the database is the "priceless" of their development, which means a huge amount of user information and user volume.
With the rise of the Internet, the importance of databases has become even more prominent. Oracle, which has a comprehensive database, once held half of the global market and even more so in China.
In order to seek greater development, NetEase, Tencent and other large domestic Internet companies have established cooperative relations with Oracle at a high price.
Oracle's database services require partner companies** to purchase and pay 20% of the database fee annually as a service fee, a high cost that many new Internet companies are afraid of.
For those businesses that already have a certain market share, in order to avoid being defeated by competitors, they can only grit their teeth and pay this "rent". Even large companies that have been working with them for a long time rarely get preferential policies from Oracle.
If some companies "dare" to express their displeasure with this, Oracle will even simply cancel their right to use its database. This is clearly Oracle's use of its monopoly position to "do whatever it wants" in China.
In 2008, Oracle tried to pressure China Unicom to pay a one-time service fee of 60 million yuan or stop the service. Although Chinese companies feel helpless, they are helpless.
This payment, which has lasted for 30 years, has allowed Oracle to make a lot of money in the Chinese market for the past 30 years. In 1995, Oracle's turnover reached $3 billion.
By the year 2000, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft had formed a three-pronged situation in the global database market, and then Oracle entered a stage of rapid development.
All of this is thanks to a number of hostile acquisitions and acquisitions carried out by Ellison, integrating several software companies.
In 2005, Oracle surpassed IBM and Microsoft for the first time in the database market. By 2008, foreign giants such as Oracle entered an era of **.
Some graduates have said that receiving an offer from Oracle is the best job opportunity they can get. Oracle's salary level even exceeds that of Chinese internet companies such as Tencent and Alibaba.
At the time, what we call "bat" was still quite unknown. However, the company, which has made a lot of money in China, is hostile to China. In order to consolidate his monopoly position in China, Ellison pursued a policy of "de-sinicization."
He made it clear that he could not allow China to produce more engineers than the United States. As a result, Oracle will not train Chinese employees or have Chinese as senior executives in the company.
It turned out that although Oracle offered higher salaries, Chinese employees had a low status in the company and had little chance of promotion. In retrospect, the rejection of cloud data decisions and the dissatisfaction with Oracle reveal the fact that only by taking the initiative can you avoid being treated unfairly.
Therefore, domestic Internet companies have begun to develop independently to change this situation.
Since 2009, Oracle's decline in the Chinese market has gradually emerged, and employee bonuses have shrunk, salary increases have been difficult, and founding team members have begun to leave. Much of this phenomenon is attributed to Alibaba's Wang Jian "convincing" Alibaba to create Alibaba Cloud.
As Oracle's largest user in the Asia-Pacific region, Alibaba has the world's largest "Oracle Cluster", with 20 nodes, three more than Amazon in the United States.
In 2008, Alibaba established the strategic direction of cloud computing and big data and decided to develop it independently"Flying"System. After the Spring Festival, the Feitian team began to write the first line of ** in the unheated Beijing office, and at the same time held high the banner of "going to the oracle bone culture".
In 2010, Alibaba Cloud began testing with the public. In 2011, Alibaba Cloud was officially launched and began to provide cloud computing services. In July 2013, Oracle's database was officially withdrawn from the core advertising system, and Chinese companies began to truly "get rid of" Oracle.
This incident has made China's Internet peers and ** departments see a new "hope", and they have gone to Alibaba Cloud to investigate and learn in order to "remove the Oracle culture".
At the same time, Oracle's position in China began to decline.
Oracle used to lay off employees only sporadically, but in reality most employees left voluntarily. The company doesn't focus on developing Chinese employees, and anyone who is motivated will choose to leave.
Many of them went to Alibaba, others went to other Internet companies, and Oracle was gradually recognized by the industry as a "pension company". In May 2019, Oracle began large-scale layoffs, with more than 900 employees at its Beijing R&D center laid off, who received high compensation according to the N+6 compensation standard, but this marked a complete failure for Oracle in China and eventually had to withdraw from the Chinese market.
At the same time, the company also laid off 300 employees in Seattle, USA, showing the decline of a giant company.
Oracle was once known as the "red giant" in the U.S. market with its bright red logo, but it has suffered a waterloo in the huge market of China.
The reason is that Oracle has not only not fully localized, but has even adopted a strategy of "de-Chineseization". Past experience has taught us that it is difficult for companies that do not consider localization to succeed in the Chinese market.
However, Ellison doesn't seem to realize this, and he thinks he can be the exception.
Oracle's Shenzhen R&D center is led by a French head who reports directly to U.S. headquarters. The team is relatively new to the mainland market and customer needs, and mainly adopts the management model of the United States and Singapore.
Few of Oracle's senior executives are from Chinese mainland, while most of the Chinese executives are from Singapore. The Chinese who can serve as executives are mainly from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
In addition, Chinese engineers were unable to view the core of Oracle's database**, and could only perform edge optimization and maintenance work without iteration, which gradually diminished Oracle's advantage in China.
Oracle's high service fees and overbearing policies in China have made Chinese companies choose to abandon them once they find a better alternative. In addition, Oracle has failed to keep up with the trend of cloud computing, and its rigid and conservative business methods have made it drift away from the Chinese market and unable to adapt to the rapidly evolving Chinese market.
Although Oracle had announced a high-profile "marriage" with Tencent around 2016, this marriage seems to have only stayed at the level of public relations and failed to truly achieve the goal of "recovering lost ground".
While Ellison may have just tried to win back the hearts of his users with some kind of gesture, he didn't actually take any substantive action. Now Tencent, Huawei, and even Coolpad are conducting independent research and development, and although Oracle is still an American giant, it is difficult to make a comeback in the Chinese market.
Oracle recently regained the attention of the Chinese when it entered into a partnership agreement with TikTok to become its "trusted technology provider."
However, the agreement still needs to be approved by U.S. companies before it can take effect. While Oracle may still have an advantage in the global market, in the Chinese market, they seem to have failed, and there seems to be no sign of their return to the Chinese market at this time.