Sun Smells the Coffee

[I know, it's been a long time...]
As a friend of mine pointed out, Jonathan Schwartz has announced that Sun Microsystems is retiring its SUNW stock symbol and replacing it with JAVA.

While some might think this is a silly move, I'm looking at it as a pretty shrewd one. Why? it is a great way for Sun to reinforce its Java brand. Think about it. Every news article will look something like:

Sun Microsystems (symbol: JAVA) announced today...

This kind of thing can be problematic for companies. A decade and a half ago there was this company making Macintosh computers, yet people didn't associate them with Apple.

Oh, and while I'm on the subject: I have not always been a fan of Sun technology. However, my opinion has changed, as both ZFS and DTrace look really, really cool...