It started with an URL - or: The source of rumours

I got aware of a new rumour in regard of Oracle and Sun: This rumour is based on a CNN article, which speculated that Oracle will sell of the hardware business of Sun to HP. I just dismissed it as a large heap speculation. They have to speculate as the media doesn’t have any insight knowledge and i didn’t wanted to write about it. Okay, but now there is an additional twist in the story. I joked about it a few days ago that this will provoke exactly this reaction from the tin foil hat department. The Sun+Oracle is faster web page was available under the URL http://www.oracle.com/features/hp/sunoraclefaster.html, later it moved to http://www.oracle.com/features/sunoraclefaster.html. I assume, you know what people thought now? Yes … the /hp/ part in the URL is a sure sign that the rumour at CNN is true. Really, some people think that and i’ve heard, there are some people at competitors, who fuel this thoughts. Folks, could you please do at least a little bit of fact checking? Let’s look at the Oracle website.
http://www.oracle.com/features/hp/middleware-strategy.html … ehh … no HP here</a>, http://www.oracle.com/features/hp/oracle-database-11g.html … sorry … it’s about 11g, not something in relation to HP. Oh, http://www.oracle.com/features/hp/innovation-on-demand-crm.html … nope … no luck … no HP in there. Okay, people with the nice silver hats … it may be possible that /hp/ may stand for something like home page, high performance, hillarious projections or even horse poo. Okay, home page looks like the most probable explanation as those stories were homepage features. And vice versa: http://www.oracle.com/openworld/2008/hp.html, that’s an article about HP at the Openworld, no /hp/ in this URL. Or this piece about the Exadata Storage Server at http://www.oracle.com/profit/features/exadata.html. Heck … no /hp/ in this url, too. Okay, okay … i know what comes next: Oracle felt catched in their intentions about Sun HW business and renamed the page out of this reason. Folks, entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Perhaps there is the remote possibility there was someone at Oracle who thought that putting Sun, Oracle an the to letters h and p in the same line isn’t such an intelligent move, when you want to brag about the performance of Sun equipment. And perhaps someone at Oracle thought, it isn’t a good idea to have this URL, when you don’t want to fuel any rumours from outsiders or FUD from competitors, especially in the light of such blatant speculation pieces like the CNN article, which was published a day earlier. And to close this article: There are dozens of reasons why the CNN article is just unfounded speculation, but i just want to hint to a single line. Oracle wrote in the announcement for the TPC-C result publication on October 14th:” Check back on October 14 as we demonstrate Oracle’s commitment to Sun hardware and Sun SPARC.”. Enough said.