For years under company founder David Duffield, PeopleSoft Inc. took Oracle Corp. to task for everything from its boss Larry Ellison's cutthroat management style to his swinging social life.

Take this barb from a Top 10 list read at a PeopleSoft quarterly meeting: "And the No. 1 way PeopleSoft would be different if run by 10-year-olds: CEO would finally be able to relate to Larry Ellison on his level."

With the power-suited, ubercompetitive Craig Conway now at the helm, the verbal clashes between the two struggling software makers could make the lions in ancient Rome's Colosseum seem tame.

Ellison has repeatedly predicted PeopleSoft's demise. Conway, himself an ex-Oracle executive known for his sharp elbows and tongue, once referred to Ellison as "sociopathic."

The long-running feud left the realm of cheap shots and reached new heights of bitterness Friday when Ellison threatened to drive PeopleSoft out of business with a $5.1 billion hostile takeover bid.

Oracle launched the bid in response to PeopleSoft's announcement four days ago that it would merge with Denver-based J.D. Edwards & Co., a deal that had Ellison fuming because it would catapult PeopleSoft ahead of Oracle in the business software market.

PeopleSoft blasted Oracle for engaging in what it called disruptive tactics to derail PeopleSoft's merger, undermine its business and spook customers. In an interview with the Associated Press, Conway likened Ellison's tactics to those of Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan, which the famously ruthless Ellison probably took as a compliment.

Colleagues said they could imagine Duffield, PeopleSoft's normally mild-mannered chairman who smiled as PeopleSoft employees chanted "crush Oracle" at company meetings, cringing in his lavish home near Lake Tahoe at the thought of handing over his company to Ellison.

"I don't know if there is enough money that could be put on the table for Dave in this deal," said an executive who worked closely with Duffield at PeopleSoft.

Duffield and Ellison couldn't be more different. Duffield was affectionately known at PeopleSoft as DAD, his initials. Ellison wars with former proteges, some of whom, such as Tom Siebel of Siebel Systems, now run competing companies.

Even companies' cultures are at odds. Oracle fosters a tightly wound, take-no-prisoners mentality. Even though Conway has imposed discipline across the company, PeopleSoft still holds onto vestiges of its free-wheeling culture. PeopleSoft's band, the Raving Daves, for example, still makes regular appearances.

PeopleSoft rose to early success selling software that automated benefits, pensions and other processes for human resources departments before becoming the East Bay's largest technology company by expanding into other markets.

Duffield built PeopleSoft into a software giant by putting the "cult" in culture. He took a very personal approach to business. He called his employees "PeoplePeople" and instituted fun as an official company policy. He ran quarterly meetings David Letterman-style. At a conference for customers in San Francisco, PeopleSoft set up carnival rides and had the B-52s and the Neville Brothers play.

Employees boasted about their "hire number" on company T-shirts -- the lower the number, the greater their pride. PeoplePeople, as employees were known, had PeopleBabies, who got their own numbers.

Duffield's rules of business behavior guided company culture. Among them: to treat everyone with the same respect they would give the late Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.

Employees felt like extended family, said PeopleSoft historian David Ogden. "It was a very people-oriented culture that respected people, encouraged innovation and creativity as well as dissension and contrary opinions," Ogden said.

Until the mid-1990s, sales doubled almost every year and the stock soared. But, by 1998, the laid-back PeopleSoft had begun to falter. Sales slowed and competition mounted. Companies stopped spending money ahead of the year 2000 due to fears of computer glitches. PeopleSoft's strategy was unfocused.

For all the fun, a sense grew inside PeopleSoft that the company needed adult supervision. Duffield recruited Conway, shooting pictures of him playing a slot machine in the Reno airport to show the gamble Conway was taking.

After taking charge as chief executive officer in September 1999, Conway forced the company to grow up. He slashed costs, fired top executives and bet the company's future on the Internet and new markets, returning PeopleSoft to profitability.

Demoralized PeoplePeople greeted the no-nonsense ex-Oracle sales executive and his mantra of "competitiveness, intensity, accountability" with suspicion. After all, these are the employees who joked that Oracle was the "evil empire" and who wanted bumper stickers for their cars that read: "Mean people suck. Fortunately most of them work at Oracle."

They complained when Conway stopped paying for free bagels, a $2 million-a-year expense. But they couldn't argue with the results. Conway pulled off one of the most dramatic turnarounds in corporate history.

And, showing he is less like Ellison than people thought, Conway has tried to be hip to the old PeopleSoft's culture. At a company event the summer he joined PeopleSoft, the suit-clad Conway gamely volunteered for the dunking tank. The following year he took the stage in front of thousands of PeopleSoft employees in a white jacket and bell bottoms and boogied like John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever."

"The start-up mentality has gone away, which it should," Ogden said. "Things are a little more serious now."

Things couldn't get much more serious than they were Friday. PeopleSoft employees described the mood in the company's shiny Pleasanton headquarters Friday as "somber."

Will Ellison have the last laugh?

"It's a little bit too early to tell," said one employee.