Two industry titans merge -- SUN builds major hardware, Oracle is the SQL database to use when the others aren't robust enough. From Bloomberg:
Oracle to Buy Sun for $7.4 Billion as IBM Talks End
Oracle Corp. agreed to buy Sun Microsystems Inc. for about $7.4 billion in cash, swooping in after the server maker's talks to be acquired by International Business Machines Corp. failed.
Oracle will pay $9.50 a share, 42 percent more than Sun's closing price on April 17. Oracle plans to make Sun a profitable part of its business and said the purchase will add $1.5 billion to operating earnings, excluding some items, in the first year.
The takeover moves Oracle, the world's second-largest software maker, into the market for server and storage computers, pitting the company against IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co. Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison also gains Sun's Java programming language and Solaris operating system, which work with its top-selling database program.
"They're really going to zero in on just the most strategic part of Sun's hardware business," said Heather Bellini, an analyst at UBS AG in New York, with a 'buy' rating for Oracle's shares. "They'll end up making the company much better run."
Very cool -- I will assume that they are going to keep developing Open Office. There is the old joke: "What is the difference between Larry Ellison and God?" "God doesn't think he is Larry Ellison" (rim-shot)
As someone that cut his teeth on SunOS back when it was BSD based and king of the world... I saw this as sort of sad... It was sort of symbolic of the end of a giant to me.