In contrast to the author of this piece, I think the officials at Sun recognize that at its core the stock market is based far more on mass psychology than on pragmatism. This to me is simply one more reinforcement of that reality. Symbolism in the stock market can be just as significant as analysts' ratings. SUNW, the current ticker symbol for Sun, doesn't symbolize or represent what we as investors are buying nearly as well as JAVA does. It also sends the message that Sun is fully commited and believes in this tecnology and it's viability far into the future - a message that will not be lost on investors.

Please read more at:
http://www.omninews.com/

This type of tactic isn't just with one company. Harley-Davidson changed its ticker from HDI to HOG to reflect its owners, Anheuser-Busch is BUD, and Cedar Fair is FUN.

This is the beginning of the end of SUN as primarily a hardware company. First the deal with IBM regarding use of Solaris 10 and now an open recognition that investors seen value in "Java" and not workstations. Of course, Sun long ago started 'branding' all of their software "Java" products even though many of them (e.g. Directory server, Mail server) didn't use Java at all. At the time this was seen as a sign of marketing desperation. Now it is being called pragmatic.

This is really funny.

On a side note-- SUN invented Java and everyone except SUN made money with Java.

Although it would be quaint, I can't see why IBM would want to be associated with a Minnesota Farm. And Microsoft as "Denial of Service"? Well, ok you gotta point there!

Well, I wasn't going to buy any Sun stock, but NOW, how can I avoid it? They call themselves JAVA, sort of. I'm going to go out and buy millions of shares! W00T!

I think I agree, although this may ultimately be a pretty small issue.

Technologies normally have shorter lifespans thant the companies that created/marketed those technologies. Therefore this is short(er) term thinking to go with JAVA.

Most marketing theory, as I understand it, revolves around creating a brand. You want your brand to represent the company in some positive way. This should help attract customers to your door, where you can sell them goods and services.

But let's look at the other side of this issue. Sun didn't change their name, they changed their stock market symbol. That's probably a much smaller matter, and quicker/cheaper too. So Sun could change the symbol again in say 2020, when their big technology might be LATTE.

Brian -

The way things are going, I'm thinking that by 2020 they could very well change it to ""RUBY" or "PYTN" or maybe "GRVY".

As an ex-Smalltalker friend of mine once said long ago when Java was first introduced: "Java - an object-oriented language that only a C++ programmer could love" (and he wasn't referring to the syntax).

Cheers,

- Bill