| What is it about Sun and crazy rumors? |
Mar. 10, 2006
Sun seems to bring out crazy rumors and I really would like to know why these stories get started.
First up for your consideration, straight from the virtual pages of Forbes, we have a story about how Sun Microsystems has moved on from the bad old days of the Internet bubble, and how, in the light of this, Mr. Sun, aka CEO Scott McNealy, may soon move on.
Really?
Let me check the Yahoo Finance page for Sun. No, Sun is still losing money. And, its stock price is still sitting on the upper side of four dollars, which, by the way, is the neighborhood it's been in for a year now.
For those of you who don't follow the stock market, a stock that's under five bucks a share is not doing well. Some people even call them "penny stocks," which, despite the spam you may have seen urging you to buy them, isn't that far away from being junk.
Now, I happen to think that Sun can make a comeback. While, lord knows, I have my problems with its on-again, off-again approach to Linux, I like its more positive attitude towards open-source and I like what it's doing with its newest SPARC chip, the T1 Niagara.
All that said, Sun isn't back yet. I know that, Sun knows that, and the fact that, one, count 'em, one analyst thinks otherwise does not a news story make.
Besides, Scott McNealy is Sun. He may retire someday, but I think we're more likely to see Bill Gates of Microsoft or Larry Ellison of Oracle walk away from their companies before McNealy leaves Sun.
Next up, we have the hot-hot rumor that Google is going to buy Sun. I've heard that one no fewer than three times today.
When I tracked it down, I found that the "source" is a blogger named Daniel Harrison. Harrison has been blogging for several weeks now that Google is about to buy Sun.
The smoking gun? Google and Sun's less then impressive partnership last fall, the fact that Google can afford to buy Sun, former Sun executive Eric Schmidt is now Google CEO, and "the numerous option excercising [sic] and sale of stock insiders" at Sun.
In a later blog, Harrison seizes on that Forbes story I made fun of above as still more "proof" for his theory.
In his latest missive, Harrison declares that since people from Sun have been reading the earlier stories this is yet more proof that he's right about the buyout.
It's enough to make me weep.
There's nothing here. Nothing!
People from Microsoft read Linux-Watch, too. Somehow, I don't think that means Ballmer is going to be replacing Vista with Microsoft Linux (or even Linux Vista, for that matter).
Let's flip this around.
Give me one good reason why Google would want to buy Sun.
Dead silence.
There is no valid reason for Google to buy Sun.
If Google really wanted to do something interesting with operating systems, it could make its own Linux distribution.
No, wait, we already went through that nonsense six weeks ago, didn't we?
Look, I'm no financial analyst, but I do know something about journalism. There are no hard facts behind any of these Sun stories. It's all opinion, and it's not even especially well-based opinion.
Of course, I could be wrong. I mean, Time-Warner and AOL, who ever thought that was a good idea? Come to think of it, all the people who liked that idea are still in hiding these days from ticked-off stockowners. Still, I think I'll see Linus Torvalds appointed as president of Microsoft before I see Google buy Sun.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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