August 24th, 2007
Top 25 responses to Sun's JAVA move
Stockholders and employees are among the most vocal critics of Jonathan Schwartz’s move yesterday to change Sun’s stock ticker to JAVA. Here’s my pick of the most thoughtful, scathing, informative, or just funniest comments posted so far.
Reaction to yesterday’s announcement that Sun was changing it’s stock ticker to “JAVA” has been swift and almost entirely negative. As of this writing, there are about 200 comments on CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog where he announced the new stock symbol, with reactions running 10 to 1 against the move. I picked 25 of my favorite comments and arranged them below into categories for Negative, Neutral, Positive, and Funny. Almost all of them are from current and former employees, or from stockholders.
Negative
What a TERRIBLE idea! When we used “Java” in the name of all our software products a few years ago, customers were confused and frankly just laughed at us– Java Desktop System was the prime offender, as it mostly uses no Java technology whatsoever. We’re still licking our wounds and only just beginning to change the name of JDS now in OpenSolaris. So why use it for a company where most of the staff and products aren’t Java-related either?
– Posted by Numpty on August 23, 2007 at 09:46 AM PDT
Sun once again fails to grasp the big picture. While ‘Java’ may be better known by the public than ‘Sun Microsystems’, the perception of Java by the public isn’t good, so why associate the entire company with it? Synonyms for Java are ‘Big’, ‘Fat’, ‘Bloated’, and ‘Slow’. Are those the terms you want to characterize your company? Actually, as a former employee, I’d say those are actually pretty accurate. Nevermind, sounds like a great idea!
– Posted by Josh on August 23, 2007 at 10:47 AM PDT
I am a huge fan of Sun. I have used Java since it was invented. I want you to succeed. But this is the worst idea I have ever heard of. Worst ever! Johnathan, you must be drinking your own kool-aid. Sun is a systems company with storage, chips, servers, operating systems, VMs, middle-ware,applications, services, etc. Java is only a small part of it. The ticker symbol represents the whole company. If it is not aligned with the name of the company, confusion will result. Changing SUNW to JAVA is a distraction, a waste of time and money when there are much bigger fish to fry, and will ultimately cause brand confusion - not clarity. Eat some crow and reverse this decision.
– Posted by scott on August 23, 2007 at 11:26 AM PDT
Ed Burnette is a professional developer and author of several articles and books about computing including Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform, 2nd Edition. For disclosure of Ed's industry affiliations, click here or to view his full profile click here.
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