We just remembered that in addition to owning 60% of NetSuite, Larry Ellison was also a major investor in Salesforce. So the dude is making a lot of money from enterprise software that is not owned by Oracle. Which begs tha question: if there is so much value in NetSuite and Salesforce.com, shouldn't Ellison have built these companies within Oracle?

What a silly question. Larry is going to invest in what he considers to be good investments, but he's gambling with his own money. I am sure it helps him that they are built on Oracle... but he was also a substantial share owner in Apple for a while. Should Oracle have built Apple too?

It would have been more reckless for Larry to have used Oracle money (rather than just siphoning it off so that he has investable assets) to invest. And to build every enterprise tool that might be better for Oracle if built by Oracle is a good way to kill Oracle.