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Oracle started as a CIA project (2014)

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Re: Oracle started as a CIA project (2014)

#31

Post by jussion_zoonist »

mikece wrote: post #2

Through In-Q-Tel, the CIA invested in a LOT of companies who were aiming to solve the problems they had. Google was another very early investment by In-Q-Tel on behalf of the NSA because Google's stated goal -- to collect, organize, and make sense of all of the world's data -- overlaps with what the NSA's goal is (and it's possible that Google might come up with better ideas and tech for doing it than the NSA's brain…

IIRC Google began with a DARPA grant but they were not directly funded by In-Q-Tel. However, In-Q-Tel invested in a different company that Google acquired which was the basis for Google Earth and through that acquisition In-Q-Tel gained shares in Google.

Re: Oracle started as a CIA project (2014)

#32

Post by googlryas »

chasil wrote: post #17

"What books you bought on Amazon is stored in an Oracle database." This has not been true for some time. https://www.theregister.com/2019/10/16/amazon_ditches_oracle...

Keep in mind the article was written in 2014. I was at Amazon until near the end of 2013 and we were actively migrating off of oracle at that time, but it was no where near ready when I left.

Re: Oracle started as a CIA project (2014)

#33

Post by judge2020 »

jongjong wrote: post #21
CyanBird wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just "a little"... A LOT A good primer on the topic for the interested https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...

I sometimes wondered if the whole 'big data' craze was a symptom of too much government intervention... A projection of the needs of governments (not the needs of people). How valuable is people's data, really? I understand why people who work for the CIA are thirsty for data and believe that data is the most valuable resource in the universe... But why is the industry interested in it to that extent? It's difficult…

Google didn't collect that much 'data' (outside of strictly required website data for finding things via their search engine) before they saw the profit implications of a B2B targeted ads solution, which was realized with their purchase of doubleclick.

Re: Oracle started as a CIA project (2014)

#34

Post by mistrial9 »

atemerev wrote: post #3

So did Google Earth. The Internet itself was funded by ARPA, a DoD agency. I think it is a good thing: the military will always be doing military research, but at least in the US its fruits often become available to the public.

no substantiation.. I think the wikipedia article addresses this ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#History

Re: Oracle started as a CIA project (2014)

#35

Post by ab_testing »

chasil wrote: post #17

"What books you bought on Amazon is stored in an Oracle database." This has not been true for some time. https://www.theregister.com/2019/10/16/amazon_ditches_oracle...

Amazon still runs on Oracle ERP. Even though they removed Oracle databases from AWS and other internal orgs, their own financials are still run in Oracle EBS. Thus the data for all the books bought by a person might still be in Oracle

Re: Oracle started as a CIA project (2014)

#39

Post by createdapril24 »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #16
createdapril24 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the "problems they had" aren't necessarily "they needed a better database technology". Oracle's mission is to have all bits of data in the world processed or stored on an Oracle system (source: I worked for Oracle, this was the internal mission statement). Oracle collects: 1. Who is staying in which hotels and in which rooms 2. Who is eating at which restaurants and going to which entertainment facilities 3. Who…

Do you have a link to details about the CIA funding FB? I heard that as a rumor but thought it was debunked

Honestly I had not fact checked this. A quick internet search found lots of articles making different claims (CBS News says yes, Reddit says yes, IQT website does not list, Quora says no.) Overall there doesn't appear to be a very strong argument and this Quora article (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-substance-of-the-claim-tha...) makes a compelling case that the connection is too tenuous.

I will remove from parent content.

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