Anybody who ever left Microsoft to Amazon, we could count on them coming back within a year or two, because it's not a great place to work to do innovative stuff as an engineer.

From a client perspective, I really think the work Microsoft's doing with Surface, with HoloLens, with Xbox, that stuff's absolutely essential to the company's future. Because innovation in the future will either be from the cloud out to all devices, or from devices as supported by software in the cloud.

Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.

We [Microsoft] don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference.

Certainly, we continue to bring in new people. We'll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year, and attract great people into the company. I'm very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.

[Two months later Oracle nemesis Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft, was asked to respond to Ellison's comments.] I think he is right, ... We don't agree on much, but I think on that we would agree.