Gates claims victory in $1m bet with Ellison

NEWS Microsoft is trying to claim $1m from Larry Ellison, after it met the conditions of a challenge set by the Oracle chairman and CEO in November. Four months ago, Ellison said that if anyone could make Microsoft's SQL Server database work at more than 10 per cent of the speed of Oracle 8i, he'd give them $1m. However, on 22 February Oracle withdrew the offer, just weeks before Microsoft claimed victory. Microsoft says it achieved a speed of 1.075 seconds against Oracle's 0.7 seconds for a standard business enquiry to a one terabyte database. The Seattle giant claimed to have achieved this at one sixteenth of the cost of the Oracle software. But Oracle is less than impressed. Gary Pugh, marketing manager at Oracle said: "Interesting that they say they've met the challenge, when it was closed at the end of last month. Microsoft have yet to prove they've achieved these figures - the test was not independently audited so the numbers are meaningless." An Oracle spokesman in the US was more outspoken, claiming Microsoft is "grossly misleading people about the capabilities of their products". But Marina Stedman, SQL server product manager for Microsoft, said: "Customers can now get the benefits of searching a database quickly - they are interested in what they can do, not the technical stuff behind it."