5 ms·

Sun microsystem disappearing was/is a saddest case of a business failing for me. I wish they have done the correct marketing and partnership back in the time.

jjtheblunt 4y ago
They got absorbed by Oracle.
- ericvsmith 4y ago
  It would be hard to argue that Sun has not disappeared.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Consumed by a black hole of legal wrangling and excessive billing.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  One of the most innovative companies absorbed by the company whose only innovation is finding new legal loopholes to screw more money out of their customers. Some fates are worse than disappearance.
  - forgetfulness 4y ago
    At least they began iterating more quickly on Java, I remember as years went by and Sun's OOP purists were still saying that they were considering anonymous functions but just couldn't decide on the syntax.
  - smackeyacky 4y ago
    That's not entirely fair to Oracle. Their original database had a big impact. It was only later that their business model switched to screwing their own customers as hard as possible.
ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
General Magic [1] is also a contender. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic
- CalChris 4y ago
  General Magic never really accomplished anything. Sun did. GM was more famous for people who worked there than anything else. Did they work on things early? Yeah, so did Ted Nelson. But did they ship product real people used? Not really. I don't think anyone outside Silicon Valley remembers them.
  - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
    "Magic Link PIC-2000 was released in 1996." [1], 11 years before the iPhone. Sure, they didn't have the success of Sun, some could say that would make General Magic's case sadder: wasted potential hurts more than the inability to follow the future. I have never been in Silicon Valley and I remember General Magic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Link
ajross 4y ago
It wasn't marketing. Their products were just bad. Late model SPARC devices were trying to compete with Intel Coppermines that were literally twice as fast and three times cheaper. There was a brief moment where it looked like a pivot to software (via Java) might save them, but Microsoft killed that. Then very late they tried moving to x86 hardware themselves, but by then Linux had reached feature parity and passed Solaris in performance. The final knife was the cloud. AWS was a huge paradigm shift for how one provisions hardware to Unixy software, and Amazon was a Linux shop and Solaris had nowhere to fit.
- ayewo 4y ago
  IIRC, it wasn't the cloud per se that did them in, it was the 2008 financial crisis.
- sys_64738 4y ago
  Ironically, Sun had Utility Computing for a buck a CPU hour way before anybody grasped the concept in the mid-2000s. When Oracle took over then they immediately killed this (became known as Sun Cloud) and had to start way late with Oracle Cloud. If Sun had kept going then they could have been where AWS eventually ended up. Oh well.

jjtheblunt 4y ago

They got absorbed by Oracle.

ericvsmith 4y ago
It would be hard to argue that Sun has not disappeared.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Consumed by a black hole of legal wrangling and excessive billing.
wkat4242 4y ago
One of the most innovative companies absorbed by the company whose only innovation is finding new legal loopholes to screw more money out of their customers. Some fates are worse than disappearance.
- forgetfulness 4y ago
  At least they began iterating more quickly on Java, I remember as years went by and Sun's OOP purists were still saying that they were considering anonymous functions but just couldn't decide on the syntax.
- smackeyacky 4y ago
  That's not entirely fair to Oracle. Their original database had a big impact. It was only later that their business model switched to screwing their own customers as hard as possible.

ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago

General Magic [1] is also a contender. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic

CalChris 4y ago
General Magic never really accomplished anything. Sun did. GM was more famous for people who worked there than anything else. Did they work on things early? Yeah, so did Ted Nelson. But did they ship product real people used? Not really. I don't think anyone outside Silicon Valley remembers them.
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
  "Magic Link PIC-2000 was released in 1996." [1], 11 years before the iPhone. Sure, they didn't have the success of Sun, some could say that would make General Magic's case sadder: wasted potential hurts more than the inability to follow the future. I have never been in Silicon Valley and I remember General Magic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Link

ajross 4y ago

It wasn't marketing. Their products were just bad. Late model SPARC devices were trying to compete with Intel Coppermines that were literally twice as fast and three times cheaper. There was a brief moment where it looked like a pivot to software (via Java) might save them, but Microsoft killed that. Then very late they tried moving to x86 hardware themselves, but by then Linux had reached feature parity and passed Solaris in performance. The final knife was the cloud. AWS was a huge paradigm shift for how one provisions hardware to Unixy software, and Amazon was a Linux shop and Solaris had nowhere to fit.

ayewo 4y ago
IIRC, it wasn't the cloud per se that did them in, it was the 2008 financial crisis.
sys_64738 4y ago
Ironically, Sun had Utility Computing for a buck a CPU hour way before anybody grasped the concept in the mid-2000s. When Oracle took over then they immediately killed this (became known as Sun Cloud) and had to start way late with Oracle Cloud. If Sun had kept going then they could have been where AWS eventually ended up. Oh well.