[LINK] no more sun.com

[Fernando Cassia]

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 6:59 AM, Jan Whitaker <jwhit at janwhitaker.com> wrote:
> "Sun Microsystems, one of the original gangsters responsible for
> supplying all the electronics and infrastructure we now know as the
> internet, ceased to be Sun Microsystems in January of last year.
> Assimilated into the Oracle juggernaut, its operations no longer
> carry that familiar logo and soon they'll no longer even be
> referenced in the same spot on the internet. Yes, after 25 years of
> answering the call of sun.com, the company that no longer is will be
> letting go of its former domain name as well. The site has already
> been redirecting users to Oracle for quite a while, but come June
> 1st, it'll be like the Sun we knew had never even risen."
>
> http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/16/sun-com-the-twelfth-oldest-domain-on-the-internet-will-be-deco/

I share your pain, Jan. I don't know where the phrase originates but a
local politics pundit likes to repeat "common sense is the least
common of all".

Funnily, I just wrote this to one of Oracle's managers, about
java.sun.com redirecting to an awfully long URL, impossible to
remember, and suggesting the firm reverts to short, meaningful URLs
that are easy to remember.


------
from	Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com>
to	XXXXXXXXXXXXX <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXc at oracle.com>,
date	Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 6:03 AM
subject	Awfully long URL to download Oracle Java "developer VM" is broken...

I recently visited the old http://java.sun.com page, that luckily
automagically redirects to the new java page at Oracle.com,
oracle.com/technetwork/java/something (very long, can remember it,
while java.sun.com was a piece of cake to remember)...

And I see a new link that reads "Pre-Built VM for Java Developers"
and points to

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/technetwork/community/developer-vm/index.html

wow... EIGHTY FOUR characters long. Has Oracle heard of SHORT URLS?
Even better, MEANINGFUL, SHORT URLS? What about replacing it with
something easier to remember like

http://java.oracle.com/developer-vm

Why not?

But wait, the AWFUL LONG URL is not the only problem, the problem is
that that URL links to nowhere.

The problem is that that page does not exist yet, or is gone, or the
URL is wrong.I get:

----
We're sorry, the page you requested was not found.
We have recorded this error (404) to help us fix the problem.
You may wish to try again using one of the tools below.
-----

It's the little details that matter in keeping customers happy.
Awfully long URLS are bad. Awfully long URLs that lead to a 404 error
is worse.
Scrappng a perfectly working Java.sun.com page just to please the
Oracle branding
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
strategists at the firm's marketing dept is ludicrous.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
------

And five minutes later, I get your email, Jan, describing this lunacy....

I've known enough about turf wars inside corporations, starting with
IBM's acquisition of Lotus and their promise to keep Lotus
"independent" and with its own brand etc etc. It didn't last long.
Soon former Lotus products were being included into IBM Websphere such
and such...

The marketing dept of the acquiring company immediately feels the need
to stamp-out every sign of the acquired brand/company.... just as a
dog immediately goes to pee on every new piece of furniture dropped on
his territory, to mark it as his own...

Marketing folks... Dilbert has warned us about them for decades...

FC
PS: This change wiull make tons, tens of thousands of valid links
BROKEN, and customers UNABLE TO REACH THE INFORMATION THEY WERE
LOOKING FOR. For what purpose? Erasing the Sun brand? It will also
have the side effect of sinking Oracle pages in their PageRank, so
instead of aggregating traffic from Sun.com URLs posted all over the
net, the blogosphere, and usenet archives, no, they choose to REJECT
THOSE HITS. IN-SA-NE