A deadline is approaching with the expiration of Trump's executive-order reprieve for TikTok, and several last-minute bidders have emerged.

Amazon became the most high-profile bidder for TikTok on Wednesday, via a letter sent to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, though the New York Times says that its sources close to the matter don't expect Amazon's bid to be taken seriously.

Amazon would likely love to leverage TikTok's popularity with influencers' already common habit of endorsing products on Amazon — which gives them a cut of every sale. And, as the Times notes, TikTok would take the place of Amazon's own failed social media attempt, called Inspire.

Reuters reports that another last-minute bid for the company has come in from OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely, via his startup Zoop (which is basically like G-rated OnlyFans), and the Hbar Foundation, which manages the Hedera cryptocurrency network's treasury.

"Our bid for TikTok isn't just about changing ownership, it's about creating a new paradigm where both creators and their communities benefit directly from the value they generate," said Zoop co-founder RJ Phillips in a statement to Reuters.

April 5 is the deadline for TikTok to find a non-Chinese owner, after President Trump responded to calls from TikTok users to "save" the app, which he temporarily did via executive order after taking office. A law passed by Congress last year, in the interest of national security, makes some sort of sale or banishment of TikTok inevitable, but how this takes shape remains to be seen.

The Times reports that a backroom deal has been taking shape involving private equity firm Blackstone and software company Oracle, who may be part of a consortium of investors that could become a new "owner" over TikTok. President Trump was reportedly meeting with White House officials to discuss such a deal today — though the legality of this remains murky.

Under the law, Chinese company ByteDance would have to sell off 80 percent of its interest in TikTok to American entities.

ByteDance, to date, has never expressed a willingness to make such a sale, and the company has said that the Chinese government would block it from happening anyway.

The Times separately reports that Trump may be looking to make a "media mogul" out of his longtime pal Larry Ellison, the 80-year-old co-founder of Oracle. Ellison has already used his vast wealth to invest in Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter three years ago, and he lately "appears to be planning to grow his corporate empire," the Times says.

Oracle previously had a bid in, alongside WalMart, to buy a minority stake in TikTok back in 2020, when a sale of the company's American business was first being discussed.

Previously: Supreme Court Upholds TikTok Ban

Photo: Andrew Stickelman

Barely three years after Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison made a big stink about leaving the Bay Area for Austin, he’s planning to move the company headquarters again, this time to Nashville, Tennessee.

Extremely divorced billionaire and yacht enthusiast Larry Ellison is largely someone else’s problem these days. While Ellison still owns countless California homes, he mainly resides on a Hawaiian island that he bought up 97% of. And the database company Oracle that he co-founded made a big deal of relocating its headquarters from Redwood City to Austin, Texas in late 2020, during the height of the tech exodus.

That didn’t last long! The Wall Street Journal reports that Oracle is now planning to move its world headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee, as Ellison disclosed at a Tuesday conference session. The move comes as Oracle pivots its focus into the healthcare industry and medical records.  

Bloomberg reports that Ellison said the new (and still unbuilt) Nashville campus willl “ultimately be our world headquarters." Though he quickly seemed to regret the remark and said, "I shouldn’t have said that," perhaps worried that he might jeopardize some government incentives he got to move to Texas.

The Nashville campus has not even started construction, and won’t fully open until 2030. It’s being designed by Norman Foster, who did Apple's spaceship donut campus in Cupertino.

"There will be a concert venue, a lake with a floating stage where we can have concerts for the community,” Ellison said Tuesday. “We want to be part of the community. Our people love it here and we think it’s the center of our future."

You might think that Oracle’s only remaining footprint in the Bay Area is their name on the Giants' ballpark. But there’s more to it. Yes, years ago their annual Oracle World conference would gum up the works in SoMa, before that conference bolted for Las Vegas. And certainly no one misses that billionaire boat race America’s Cup that Ellison brought here in 2013.

But Oracle still has some 12,000 Bay Area employees, or at least did as recently as 2022, according to SFGate. That far outnumbers the reported 2,500 employees at its Austin headquarters, though the Bay Area employees are spread out across the Peninsula, SF, and the East Bay.

Related: Oracle Employees Circulate Petition Over Larry Ellison's Planned Golf Fundraiser for Trump [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CA - OCTOBER 22: Oracle co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison delivers a keynote address during the Oracle OpenWorld on October 22, 2018 in San Francisco, California. The Oracle co-founder and Chairman kicked off the annual Oracle OpenWorld conference that runs through October 25th. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Microsoft and Twitter get left at the altar, as the Redwood City-based enterprise software giant with no real experience in social media wins the prized video app that Trump pressured into being sold.

Alleged cheating billionaire yachtsman Larry Ellison has long been very visible about his high-rolling Trump fundraisers and full-throated support of the president, so it’s little surprise to see the federal government shepherd a billion-dollar megadeal his way. Still, not many saw his Redwood City cloud company Oracle as a real contestant in the TikTok takeover frenzy, where US tech players like Microsoft and Twitter were bidding against one another for the short form video-sharing app that President Trump had deemed a Chinese state security threat. But the New York Times reports on a wild (and completely vague) last-minute deal that came together rather out of the blue on Sunday, just days before a Trump-imposed September 20 deadline for a sale, that sees Oracle win the bid to become a "trusted technology provider" for TikTok — which is clearly not an outright sale — but certainly gives the Trump-supporting Ellison a major victory and reason to donate more by gaining a new swath of 100 million new TikTok users who largely occupy the 18-24 age demographic.

As CNBC notes, Oracle will merely become that "trusted" partner to Chinese-owned TikTok parent company ByteDance, a line of tech PR baloney that is ill-explained at best. Oracle put out a bare-bones two-sentence statement confirming the deal, news of which broke Sunday night, which Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin also confirmed this morning on CNBC.

The “deal,” if it even is a deal, as no cash terms were announced, is still pending a U.S. Treasury department review. And it sounds suspiciously like a compromise that saves face for both sides, and saves ByteDance from losing their most lucrative asset — either the U.S. portion of its user base, or its vast Asian market of users, which it was never clear it would give up.

Business Insider reports that TikTok sweepstakes also-ran Walmart is still interested in being part of the deal. They had cozied up with Microsoft on that failed bid, which according to a Microsoft statement, involved “significant changes” regarding “security, privacy, online safety, and combatting disinformation,”that had made ByteDance back off. Per CNBC, the deal going to Oracle could “could boost Oracle’s cloud business. It might make Oracle more visible to young consumers and give it control over a prominent advertising venue.”

While the TikTok sale/transfer/becoming a “trusted technology partner” is supposedly a security measure, security experts size this up as an absolutely meaningless gesture. “Oracle’s trusted partner status could include some code audits, but as long as the company isn’t writing the code, it will be hard to stop ByteDance from smuggling in some tracking malware if it wants to," The Verge observes. "Oracle won’t be rewriting the TikTok algorithm or handling moderation, so it will be just as easy for ByteDance to push Chinese propaganda or censor embarrassing messages. Oracle will be a contractor rather than a subsidiary, but it’s not clear that will make them any less vulnerable to pressure or subterfuge. If you were concerned about TikTok before, there’s no obvious reason you should be less concerned now."

This does bring another feather to the cap of Silicon Valley, but might turn out to be another Yahoo-style ruining of a product as we saw with Tumblr and Flickr. Or maybe nothing will change at all with TikTok, other than the fact it will have a new Trump donor middleman monetizing the product stateside.

Related: Will TikTok Youth Rock the Vote? Or Will Conservatives Game Facebook to Win Trump Another Four Years? [SFist]

Image: Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Billionaire Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is hosting a golf fundraiser for President Trump's reelection campaign on Wednesday, and some Oracle employees have started a petition saying that the event runs counter to "Oracle’s core values of diversity, inclusiveness, and ethical business conduct."

The Change.org petition now has over 2,300 signatures, though it's unclear whether all of those are from Oracle employees. "As Oracle employees, we must hold our leaders accountable for upholding their ethical responsibilities," the petition reads. "Ellison's financial support of Donald Trump endangers the well-being of women, immigrants, communities of color, the environment, LGBTQ and trans communities, disabled people, and workers everywhere. Additionally, his alliance with this ignoble and destructive figure damages our company culture as well as our relationships with partners and customers."

A senior copywriter at the company, Monica McClure, was the only person that the Silicon Valley Business Times could get to speak on the record about the petition. She says, "When I saw the news [of the fundraiser], I just thought it was pretty brazen and upsetting. I think it’s only fair that we voice our disagreement and our discontent, because there are a lot of different perspectives within our company."

The February 19 fundraiser is taking place at Ellison's property in Rancho Mirage, in the Coachella Valley, and attendees can pay $100,000 to play a round of golf and then get a photo with Trump. Those who pay $250,000 get to join in a roundtable discussion with Trump, per the Desert Sun.

Employees of Oracle who spoke with the Business Times explained that the company doesn't tend to have many moments of outspoken political revolt. As McClure puts it, "It’s not a culture where we’re openly encouraged to discuss our politics and discuss our ideas. It’s all just sort of polite." And that would stand to reason given that Ellison has done plenty of donating to Republican candidates over the years — though among Silicon Valley's richest people, Business Insider referred to him in 2012 as "more of an independent moderate."

As ZDNet points out, Ellison may also be angling to win a multi-billion dollar JEDI cloud computing contract from the Pentagon, which Microsoft won after Google pulled out of competing. But President Trump's frequent tweeting negative things about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has led to legal action from Amazon that has frozen the contract process, and now Ellison may want to slip in to claim all or part of the contract.

Following several years in which San Francisco's convention bureau has been decrying the visible homelessness and drug use on downtown streets as major potential deterrents for organizers of lucrative professional conventions, the city is losing one of its longstanding mainstays, Oracle's OpenWorld.

The San Francisco Travel Association (SFTA) confirmed the news in an email to its members Tuesday, saying that Oracle had made the "difficult decision" to relocate next year's OpenWorld conference to Las Vegas based on attendee feedback about how expensive hotel rooms are here. Also, they cited "poor street conditions," as CNBC reports.

Instead, in 2020 and the following two years, OpenWorld will be centered at Caesars Forum in Vegas. The SFTA estimates that the impact of the move will be $64 million in lost revenue to the city.

The news follows on 2018's headlines about the departure of "a major medical association" based in Chicago that decided to move its convention out of San Francisco after 2023, costing the city an estimated $40 million in lost revenue from its 15,000 attendees.

SFTA president and CEO Joe D’Alessandro told the Chronicle at the time that this was "the first time that we have had an out-and-out cancellation over the [homeless] issue, and this is a group that has been coming here every three or four years since the 1980s." D'Allesandro added, "There was a time when the biggest obstacle to having a convention here was that it can be expensive, but now we have this new factor."

OpenWorld typically brings 60,000 Oracle customers and partners to the city over five days in September, and it's been doing so every year since it launched in 1996. The conference also includes a concert with big-name performers, and this year it was at the Chase Center and featured John Mayer and Flo Rida.

This move marks a major milestone in that Oracle is a Bay Area-based company that for two decades has been bringing customers to its home turf for its convention.

Caesar's Forum, which does not open until next year, will boast a 550,000 square foot conference center and "the two largest ballrooms in the world," according to its website. Oracle said that Las Vegas's "vast amenities are tailor-made for hosting large-scale events, and we look forward to bringing the industry’s most comprehensive technology and developer conference to America’s premier hospitality destination."

In a statement given to KRON 4 and others, the company said, "Oracle continues to enjoy a strong relationship with the City of San Francisco and partners such as the San Francisco Giants and the Golden State Warriors.  We look forward to working with our longstanding counterparts in San Francisco on future events."

Oracle recently bought the naming rights of the former AT&T Park, which is now known as Oracle Park.

A complaint filed by the Department of Labor claims that software giant Oracle, which employs 45,000 US workers, is engaged in a “systemic practice of paying Caucasian male workers more than their counterparts in the same job title,” unfairly under-compensating women, African-American and Asian employees. BuzzFeed reported on the complaint earlier today,which is online and claims that the department "found gross disparities even after controlling for job title, full-time status, exempt status, global career level, job specialty, estimated prior work experience, and company tenure."

Another portion of the complaint alleges that Oracle has a "pattern and practice of hiring discrimination against qualified White, Hispanic, and African American Applicants in favor of Asian Applicants, particularly Asian Indian, based on race in 69 job titles at its headquarters." One hypothesis from the complaint is that “targeted recruitment, and referral bonuses... encouraged its heavily Asian workforce to recruit other Asians."

As Oracle has contracts with the federal government worth hundreds of millions, it must prove that it meets certain national equal employment opportunity standards by providing necessary data. The Labor Department says in its complaint that Oracle “refused to produce” data relating to compensation, hiring, and more, “any material demonstrating whether or not it had performed an in-depth review of its compensation practices." Bloomberg explains that if Oracle doesn't change its practices, those contracts could be severed and Oracle cold be barred from seeking new ones.

A spokesperson for Oracle claimed the complaint was “politically motivated, based on false allegations, and wholly without merit," in a statement.

Perhaps Oracle will fare better under a new Department of Labor led by the Trump Administration. Last month, Oracle CEO Safra Catz joined the President-Elect's transition team, saying before a meeting with him that “I plan to tell the president-elect that we are with him and will help in any way we can.” That pledge prompted one Oracle senior staffer to resign publicly in protest and disgust.

Previously: Oracle Senior Staffer Resigns In Protest After CEO Joins Trump Transition Team, Invites Others To Join Petition

In a scathing email posted publicly on LinkedIn, Oracle senior staff member George Polisner announced his resignation in protest of co-CEO Safra Catz's decision to join the Trump transition team after meeting with the President-elect along with other technology leaders last week.

Catz, an alumnus of Wharton Business school like Mr. Trump, was born in Israel to Jewish parents who emigrated to Massachusetts. She's been an executive at Oracle since 1999 and a board member of the company since 2001. After serving as Co-President and CFO beginning in 2011, she and colleague Mark Hurd were named co-CEOs of the company when Larry Ellison stepped down in 2014, presumably to spend more time with his yachts and private island.

Polisner's letter of resignation, which is addressed to Catz, cites her as saying, before the tech summit, "I plan to tell the President-elect that we are with him and are here to help in any way we can." That was something Polisner could not abide, he writes.

I am not with President-elect Trump and I am not here to help him in any way. In fact — when his policies border on the unconstitutional, the criminal and the morally unjust — I am here to oppose him in every possible and legal way.... Therefore I must resign from this once great company.

Polisner writes that he began with Oracle in 1993 and "was proud to work among some of the best software development and operations engineers in the world. I’ve made significant contributions to Oracle along the way in my various roles ranging from consulting, product development, customer advocacy, program management and now in Cloud." The senior staffer's objections to Trump are numerable and shared by many Americans.

Trump stokes fear, hatred and violence toward people of color, Muslims and immigrants. It is well-known that hate crimes are surging as he has provided license for this ignorance-based expression of malice.

He disrespects Gold Star military families, women and the disabled.

He seeks to eviscerate environmental protections, the public education system, LGBTQ rights and women’s rights.

According to Business Insider, Polisner is not seeking new employment at this time. "Right now I'm less concerned about income and more concerned about doing something that impacts society in a positive way," he told the publication.

In an effort to magnify the influence of his resignation, Polisner invites fellow Oracle employees to "Join me in saying: Donald Trump is not who America is, and he is not who Oracle Corporation is." On the website of the anti-Trump political action committee "Not Who We Are," Polisner writes that "As a member of the Oracle Corporation community, I invite all members to stand together against the racial, religious and other intolerance that Donald Trump’s policies and rhetoric promotes." So far he has received 100 signatures in solidarity. As one signatory, Christine W., wrote to the page under the "reasons for signing" section, "I am deeply disappointed that my company could in any way support this horrible human being. I'm deeply disappointed in you, Safra."

Related: Tech Executives Yuck It Up At Private Trump Tower Meeting

We're just making sure you're aware that the annual SoMa traffic clusterf**k known as Oracle OpenWorld — in which Oracle gets to shut down a whole block of Howard Street for the city's biggest yearly corporate-sponsored conference — kicked off Sunday and will continue all this week. The conference is happening a full month earlier than last year for some reason, and will thus overlap with the descent upon the city by thousands of kinky, leather-laden tourist for Folsom Street Fair, which happens Sunday and which is preceded by dozens of parties all over SoMa and elsewhere. So, that intersection of conference-goers and fetishists could make for some fun photo ops on Twitter!

(Back in 2012, Folsom Street Fair organizers actually opted to move the fair up a week to avoid conflicting with the conference, but this year maybe they figure the conventioneers are all clearing out on Sunday anyway?)

As a press release from last night has it, Oracle Executive Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison kicked things off with a keynote speech about "the world's most complete, open and integrated Cloud computing platform," and he came out swinging against main competitor in that space, Amazon Web Services.

The conference typically draws about 60,000 conventioneers to town who gobble up most of our available hotel rooms months in advance, and the week usually includes one high-profile music performance by a big-named hired act or two. This year's "Oracle Appreciation Event" will be on Wednesday night at AT&T Park and will feature sets by Gwen Stefani and Sting — so, if you're a fan, you'll want to find a conventioneer to buddy up to and snag a wristband from.

Heavy pedestrian traffic throughout the Moscone vicinity makes driving anywhere near it, for a multi-block radius, a challenge during daylight hours all of this week. Be warned, and don't naively expect that Ubers are going to be the best way in or out of SoMa anytime this week pre-8 p.m., or at all.

Public transit also gets disrupted by the event because of all the traffic rerouting needed to close Howard Street, so below are the Muni bus lines you can expect to be delayed or re-routed as a result.

• 8AX Bayshore A Express
• 8BX Bayshore B Express
• 9 San Bruno
• 9R San Bruno
• 14 Mission
• 14R Mission Rapid
• 14X Mission Express
• 21 Hayes
• 30 Stockton
• 41 Union
• 45 Union/Stockton
• 81X Caltrain Express

It happens every year (and somehow we get through it): Oracle's OpenWorld conference begins Sunday, which means street closures and traffic snarls in the Moscone Center area and beyond.

According to the SF Business Times, OpenWorld, which runs from Sunday October 25 through Thursday October 29, is SF's biggest conference, with an expected 60,000 attendees coming to (in Oracle's words) get "insight into Oracle's integrated cloud platform, the future of the enterprise, and the new era of secure computing." Hey, whatever floats your boat mega-yacht.

The infamously lady-overlooking event is already closing a number of area streets, with more to come.

Howard Street between 3rd and 4th streets closed yesterday, and will stay that way until 5 p.m. on Saturday, October 31. "Howard Street traffic will be detoured either via 2nd Street to Harrison Street or via New Montgomery Street to Hawthorne Street, then to either Folsom or Harrison streets," the MTA says.

From 11 tonight until 10 a.m., Friday, October 30, Taylor Street between O’Farrell and Ellis streets will also close, with Taylor Street traffic detoured west on Ellis Street, north on Leavenworth Street, east on O’Farrell Street and back to Taylor.

The SFMTA has no illusions of how much this will suck for commuters in the area, saying that "Significant traffic congestion is anticipated in and around Moscone Center between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. daily for the duration of the closure. Travelers are encouraged to take public transit or use alternate routes. There will be heavy pedestrian traffic in the area."

And just because you ride a bike doesn't mean you're left out of the traffic troubles, as "there is a signed bicycle detour for cyclists traveling westbound on Howard Street to turn north at 2nd Street and use Market Street to continue west. Cyclists who wish to stay on Howard Street will have the option to dismount at 3rd and Howard streets and walk their bicycle through along the sidewalk."

And here are the Muni lines that will also be detoured by the conference:

• 7 Haight/Noriega
• 8AX Bayshore A Express
• 8BX Bayshore B Express
• 9 San Bruno
• 10 Townsend
• 12 Folsom/Pacific
• 14 Mission
• 14R Mission Rapid
• 14X Mission Express
• 21 Hayes
• 30 Stockton
• 38 Geary
• 38R Geary Rapid
• 41 Union
• 45 Union/Stockton
• 81X Caltrain Express

Good luck, everyone! And godspeed. You're gonna need it.

A week ago it was reported that Salesforce.com Inc., the largest employer in San Francisco's tech sector, was at work with financial advisers after receiving takeover offers. At that time, sources said that a potential mystery acquirer had approached the company, and it was a big "Whoa, if true" moment.

Now there's a bit more corroboration in the form of another potential takeover offer. No, this one isn't Oracle, as was speculated, although that might be an additional offer on the table. Also, in speaking to the Business Times recently, that company's CEO said that a Salesforce buyout would be good for them.

No, today's potential buyer is none other than Microsoft Corp. And, interestingly, Bloomberg is reporting that the company, which represents a cloud computing rival to Salesforce in its own right, is evaluating its bid for Salesforce because of the recent news that Salesforce might be for sale in the first place. Maybe it's just rumor becoming reality, or maybe it's all rumor, but its certainly worth exploring.

Salesforce has a market value of nearly $50 billion, so it's a big buy for anyone. And, in addition to cloud computing, it should be noted that Salesforce occupies a highly favorable position in customer relationship management, or CRM.

Though we do know that Microsoft isn't actively in talks with Salesforce, meaning nothing is "imminent," we can also look back to last year, when Microsoft and Salesforce found some common ground, reaching agreement to make their enterprise software play better together. And just last week Microsoft announced its goal of increasing annual revenue from its commercial cloud business to about $20 billion, so having Salesforce on board would sure help.

A quick side note: We now know that Salesforce was involved in discussion with with SAP, another competitor, last year. These days SAP has said that it’s not considering a bid for Salesforce at this time.

As CNBC reports, shares of Salesforce were higher yesterday afternoon when the Microsoft news was first reported. But it sounds like pundits still think of Oracle as a more likely buyer. "Whether Microsoft would make a serious bid, I'm more doubtful. I think Oracle probably makes the most sense," said Rick Sherlund, director of technology research at Nomura Securities.

Previously: Salesforce For Sale? SF's Largest Tech Employer Works With Bankers To Field Takeover Offers

Salesforce.com Inc., San Francisco's largest tech employer and host of that really big conference called Dreamforce, has begun to work with financial advisers after receiving takeover offers, Bloomberg reports. Sources say that the company was approached by a potential acquirer, and though it's just speculation at this point, it would of course be huge news if it happened.

Specifically, if Salesforce were acquired, it would be the largest ever of a software company, as well as a big boost for cloud computing.

Salesforce was up 11.6 percent in New York trading today to give it a market value of around $49 billion. According to Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR & Co., Oracle is the most “realistic buyer.”“Oracle is desperate to establish itself as a leader in the cloud, and acquiring the leading cloud company and bringing on board a visionary leader in Marc Benioff would help toward accomplishing this goal,” wrote Ives. Benioff, philanthropist and CEO, was last seen giving Jeb Bush an earful when the presidential hopeful came to town.

Big Salesforce rivals, in addition to Oracle, are Microsoft and SAP, but they're behind Salesforce when it comes to customer relationship management technologies, at least according to a yearly ranking from researcher Gartner Inc.

The Business Times reached out to Benioff, who wrote back: "We never comment on rumors simply because we can't. Aloha, Marc." And we were just getting used to thinking of it as the Salesforce Tower, too.

Related: Marc Benioff Has A Few Things To Say About Tech Companies Who Don't Give Back, And Zuckerberg's 'Philanthropy'

With over 60,000 expected attendees, Oracle OpenWorld is one of San Francisco's biggest conferences. Though the event doesn't start until Sunday, preparations are already underway in the area of Moscone Center, which means closed streets and worse traffic snarls on 4th Street than there already have been during the Central Subway construction.

According to the SFMTA, from 5 a.m. yesterday through on 5 p.m., Saturday, October 4, Howard Street between 3rd and 4th streets will be closed. Instead, all Howard Street traffic (that means car, Muni, bike, pedestrian, those loud little scooter things, whatever else) will be sent down 2nd Street to Harrison Street or down New Montgomery Street to Hawthorne Street, then to either Folsom or Harrison streets.

But that's not the only transit knot: from 8 p.m. tonight through 10 a.m., Friday, October 3, Taylor Street between O’Farrell and Ellis Streets will also go down for the count. Taylor Street traffic will be sent west on Ellis Street, north on Leavenworth Street, east on O’Farrell Street and back to Taylor. Whee!

That means, the SFMTA says, that riders of the following routes should expect disruptions and delays during the closures:

8X (AX/BX) Bayshore Express
9 San Bruno
10 Townsend
12 Folsom
14 Mission
14L Mission Limited
14X Mission Express
16X Noriega
30 Stockton
38/38L Geary
41 Union
45 Union-Stockton
81X Caltrain Express

So, what's Oracle going to be doing with those streets? As the Chron explains, Howard will once again become "Oracle Plaza," with "five giant video screens for attendees who are not able to get into the main keynote speech rooms." Keynotes like the one from Larry Ellison, everyone's favorite Hawaiian island owning former CEO! What a treat.

And at 4th Street, the company will be re-assembling their 72-foot yacht that won last year’s America’s Cup. (You remember the America's Cup, that Larry Ellison vanity project that cost San Francisco millions? Yeah, that's the one!)

ANYWAY. Traffic will be a shitshow in the area, the MTA warns, as will walking around: those 60,000 conference attendees will be rushing to and from the event, which stretches across, the Chron reports, "three Moscone center halls, plus several major hotels in the area, including the Palace, the Intercontinental, the St. Regis, the Hilton Union Square and the Marriott Marquis." Have fun at Mel's, y'all!

Perhaps because he has his own island in Hawaii and another America's Cup to concentrate on now, Larry Ellison announced today that he's stepping down as CEO to take on a smaller role as "CTO and Executive Chairman, as the Business Times reports.

In Ellison's place it sounds like there will be co-CEOs, with responsibilities split between execs Safra Catz and Mark Hurd. Hurd, as you may recall, left HP to join Oracle in 2010.

Per the Business Times, "Oracle's operations will be divvied up with Catz handling manufacturing, finance and legal functions; and Hurd controlling sales, service and industry verticals."

An Oracle employee who prefers to remain anonymous tells SFist that the company at large had not yet been informed of the change by official email or other announcement this afternoon. They assumed the news must have been relayed during a sales call among the company's higher-ups.

[SF Business Times]