ROUND 2, MATCH 5: Marc Andreessen showed that his legacy could not be bought out like Cisco acquires companies. He defeated Chambers with 64% of the vote. John Chambers got byEd Whitacre in the first round with 70% of the vote. Andreessen had little trouble with Red Hat’s Matthew Szulik by garnering 86% of the vote.
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ROUND 2, MATCHUP 4: Apparently two against one is still not enough as Tim Berners-Lee garnered 81% of the vote in taking down Google’s kings. When you are the creator of the World Wide Web I suppose opponents need to gang up on you. Berners-Lee creamed his first round opponent, HP’s Leo Apotheker, who garnered no votes. Page and Brin got a battle from former VMware head Diane Greene, but prevailed with 65% of the vote.
ROUND 2, MATCHUP 3: It appears Ray Ozzie is selected for his innovative prowess and not because people just don’t like Steve Ballmer. It was neck and neck with Yahoo’s Jerry Yang until the very end when Ozzie pulled away with 60% of the vote.
ROUND 2, MATCHUP 2: The open source world came in with full force to see Linus Torvalds off to the quarterfinals with more than 75% of the vote to defeat Google’s Eric Schmidt. Both competitors had little problems getting by their first round opponents as Torvalds took down Mark Hurd, adding to his disastrous year. Schmidt had little trouble with Meg Whitman in giving her another defeat to match her gubernatorial loss in California.
ROUND 2: In what can only be thought of as a gigantic upset to the casual fan, Vint Cerf took out the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates. The father of the Internet vs. the father of the monopolistic company that set out to rule the technology world. Vint Cerf took out Scott Kriens in the first round and looks to do the same with Gates as some believe Microsoft wouldn’t be anywhere without the Internet. But if not for the antitrust suit, maybe Microsoft would have gone after the Internet too.
MATCHUP 16: In less than 140 characters, the voters easily told Biz Stone that he doesn’t quite measure up to Lou Gerstner. Gerstner saw to it that even though IBM faded in the PC market, it remained relevant with Big Blue’s mainframes. Biz Stone had plenty of naysayers when Twitter was rolled out. What can you say in 140 characters, many asked. Perhaps riding the coattails of Facebook, Twitter became an integral part of social networking to the point of now saying it has 105 million users.
MATCHUP 15: In what was a shocker in this social networking world, Paul Otellini knocked off the social networking king Mark Zuckerberg. This was one of Zuckerberg’s rare losses this year after earning, $19.8 billion, was named this year as Time’s Person of the Year and has his own comic book. Otellini has led Intel through a constant battle with AMD, as each tries to position themselves to be king of the processors. Last month Otellini outlined Intel’s shift in an attempt to stay ahead of competitors.
MATCHUP 14: Apparently voters like Apple’s over Dell computers. Steve Wozniak garnered 71% of the vote to knock off Dell CEO Michael Dell. Dell does not fear the gigantic shift to smartphones as central processing devices. Instead he believes there is a time and a place for smartphones and desktops to play harmoniously thanks to the cloud. He believes that each user will have many devices, each geared for a specific task. Wozniak recently flopped when he took out his dancing frustrations on the “Dancing with the Stars” judges. But aside from that failed attempt, Wozniak’s main claim to fame was his partnership with Steve Jobs in starting up Apple.
MATCHUP 13: In admitting he would be the first one in line to get a new iPad 2, Miguel de Icaza pretty much talked his way out of his contest against Steve Jobs in a 70% to 30% defeat. Jobs and Apple have pretty much re-revoluntionized PCs as well as portable music players, smartphones and now tablets. It was no coincidence that Apple’s resurgence came when Jobs got back into the day-to-day operations. De Icaza, who has been prominent in the open source world since creating GNOME, seems to care at least as much about usability as he does the principles behind the free software movement. De Icaza gets his share of criticism because of his occasional support for Microsoft software and other proprietary projects, but he says that, in some cases, usability should trump openness.
MATCHUP 12: Larry Ellison squeaked past Randall Stephenson 65% to 35%. Stephenson’s most recent public bout has been with Congress, as he argues for the approval of AT&T’s buyout of T-Mobile. He joined Southwestern Bell in 1982, rose up through the ranks, and in 2007 was named CEO to succeed Ed Whitacre. Oracle’s Larry Ellison has been consistently deemed the bad boy of the tech industry for his lavish lifestyle and blunt, in your face persona. He consistently ranks among the highest-paid tech CEOs and 2010 was no exception. He raked in $70.1 million, which is 17% less than the $84.5 million he netted in 2009 but still enough to top all the other pay packages we examined.
MATCHUP 11:In what is the closest result so far, Scott McNealy edged out Joe Tucci 60% to 40%. EMC’s performance in 2010 was the “best in company history,” said Joe Tucci, who saw his own compensation climb 37% during the same timeframe. The straight-shooting Tucci has been recrafting EMC into one of the industry’s megaplayers. He has expanded EMC beyond enterprise storage into a systems management company, as demonstrated by his smart, hands-off approach to the ever more-successful VMware and his acquisition of network management vendor Smarts. Despite his quiet public life since he left Oracle after Sun was bought, his body of work at Sun pulled him through to victory.
MATCHUP 10: Marc Andreessen’s trail of success in starting up companies that provide an impact to the industry got him the victory over Red Hat’s Matthew Szulik. Andreessen co-founded Netscape with Jim Clark in 1994 to market Andreessen’s creation, the Netscape web browser. Overnight, the young Andreessen was a tech superstar. After public scrapes with Microsoft, Netscape was bought by AOL in 1999 for $4.2 billion. Szulik had his first exposure to freeware, or open source software, when living in Cambridge and attending several lectures by Richard Stallman, the founder of the free software movement and author of the GNU Public License. Szulik became CEO of Red Hat in 1999, shortly after the company went public. He was relieved of his CEO duties in 2007.
MATCHUP 9: As we head into the second half of the first round, Cisco CEO John Chambers garnered 70% of the vote in defeating Ed Whitacre. During Chambers’ time at the helm, Cisco has grown into many markets, which has left the company vulnerable to criticism that it is stretching itself too thin. He has recently talked of refocusing the company. Back in 1999, SBC CEO Whitacre was called “one of the savviest leaders in this new age of networks and one of the toughest competitors in the business.” He saw the buyout of AT&T in 2005 and retired in 2007.
MATCHUP 8: Diane Greene was the figurehead for the fledgling VMware as it grew into the market, highlighted by a buyout by EMC. She put up a good fight against Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin but fell to the dynamic duo 65% to 35%. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the next generation of college students who turned an idea into a mega billion dollar enterprise, taking the baton from Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Page recently took over as CEO in hopes of taking Google to the next level. PC World named them one of the top 50 visionaries.
MATCHUP 7: Tim Berners-Lee wiped the floor with Leo Apotheker as the HP boss garnered no votes. Berners-Lee watches as the Web will officially hit adulthood this coming Christmas, which will mark 21 years since the computer scientist first initiated communications between an HTTP client and a Web server. Apotheker came into an unstable situation at HP when he took over as CEO. With Mark Hurd’s departure for questionable activity, Apotheker has been a calming influence. Hurd should be given credit for turning HP around and so the pressure is on Apotheker to keep that momentum going. When it comes to the server market, Apotheker isn’t shy about assessing Cisco’s prospects, saying John Chambers and company are neither a threat nor an annoyance: HP simply doesn’t see Cisco in sales situations.
MATCHUP 6: The voters found the power of search more important than the power of protection in picking Yahoo’s Jerry Yang over Symantec’s John Thompson. During Thompson’s 10-year tenure, he led the firm beyond a consumer-focused antivirus company through a broader enterprise-security strategy that entailed acquiring storage, management and security firms to expand Symantec’s portfolio and customer base. The jury is still out on whether Yahoo’s rejection of a deal with Microsoft was a good business move a few years ago. Yang was at the forefront and despite calls for his dismissal after the deal fell through, he remains at the helm.
MATCHUP 5: In what was a stunner to only those outside the tech industry, Ray Ozzie easily took down Steve Ballmer, who garnered only 10% of the votes. It has long been thought that Ballmer was not a technology innovator but just Bill Gates’ righthand man. And it seems the votes bear this out. Ozzie created Lotus Notes and in an an extensive interview with Network World’s Paul McNamara, Ozzie comes off as a more candid type than one typically encounters in the upper echelons of the business world. While Ballmer has been called “monkey boy” because of his on stage antics.
MATCHUP 4: Like in the race for governor in California, Meg Whitman had a good showing but didn’t quite muster enough support for the win. Eric Schmidt’s greatest career move ever vaulted him into the win.
MATCHUP 3: Linux golden boy Linus Torvalds crushed Oracle/HP bad boy Mark Hurd. Hurd collected only two votes (must have been his vote and boss Larry Ellison) in going down in a crushing defeat. He is perhaps best known for his scandalous departure from HP, amid alleged accusations of sexual and expense-report misconduct. Torvalds, on the other hand, is the beloved creator of the Linux kernel and the buck-stops-here caretaker of the Linux kernel. Torvalds is known for his dry wit, programming brilliance and, like Hurd, his ego. According to the many writings on the man, he once began a speaking engagement by pronouncing, “My name is Linus, and I am your God.”
