Sun sacks 6,000, but Schwartz won't say who

Chief executive ponytail-twirler Jonathan Schwartz is annoyingly vague in this San Jose Mercury News interview. Got more details on Sun's layoffs? Please send 'em in. Neither one of us has a job to protect anymore, so we might as well blog the facts. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

SEC, Sun CEO make sure blogging will never be fun again

Blame Jonathan Schwartz. Sun Microsystems' ponytailed Mission-hipster foodie CEO complained in 2006 that he couldn't post corporate news on his blog. SEC chairman Chris Cox stepped to, initiating a two-year study that has just concluded that yes, posting "non-public material information" on a website might suffice as a means of disclosure. What this will really accomplish: More »

Heads roll in Sun's marketing department

A tipster writes to tell us that a number of fellow Sun employees have either coincidently decided to quit the Sun Microsystems en masse, or are being given the pink slip in a round of layoffs that's rumored to include anywhere from 30 to 65 percent of the marketing department. Has Sun's ponytailed CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, decided that his blog is all the marketing Sun needs? He must be hoping that once Wall Street catches wind of the cost-cutting, it'll boost the company's stock, which has lost over half its value in the last year. After the jump, a gracious parting letter from an employee who had been with the company for over a decade. Our suggestion is that if the layoffs bump up the company's share price, the departed might want to sell before it sinks any lower. More »

Sun has great friends, but business plan still a mystery

At the JavaOne keynote this held at the Moscone Center this morning, EVP of software Rich Green took the stage and told the assembled crowd, mostly developers, "Welcome to the revolution. Businesses used to drive technology adoption, but now it's all about consumers." Which suggests the company, known historically as an enterprise hardware and software provider, is changing focus to enable more consumer-focused applications. Not mentioned? Last week's announcement of a $34 million quarterly loss and a stock price that has hardly improved since plummeting 20 percent. But look everybody, Neil Young! More »

Sun earnings so bad, they're racist

After computer maker Sun Microsystems admitted to a $34 million loss yesterday, investors could hardly wait to start the sell-off, with shares opening down and eventually closing at $12.64 — dipping as low as $12.37, well below half the the 52 week high and twenty percent in less than 24 hours. Prompting an unnamed reporter who covers Sun to let us steal the headline they'd never be allowed to run. While the company does promise to slash 2,500 employees from its payroll, the board may want to look at executive pay as well — CEO Jonathan Schwartz made Forbes' list of the twelve best-paid tech CEOs at $13.5 million.

Xerox and Sun CEOs call foreign worker limit "moronic"

By 2010, Asians will account for 90 percent of the world's engineers. Americans are increasingly too lazy to bother to get computer-science degrees. Yet the U.S. government refuses to raise the cap on H-1Bs, the visas which allow foreign engineers to work at American companies. "It's moronic," Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz tells a Stanford audience in this clip. "Because you know what happens? You put a limit here? Guess what we do. We go hire in Asia. We're not dumb. We want talent." Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy chimes in: "And by the way we don't just hire there, we build research centers there."

Sun Microsystems reported $89 million in income on $3.2 billion in revenue — a 1 percent increase year-over-year. "What we need to see is if this company can ever grow again, and the jury is still out on that question," noted one analyst. Forget that. With all the growth in online advertising, Sun should ditch the server business and figure out how to monetize CEO Jonathan Schwartz's blog. Or maybe launch a social network for Java programmers. [WSJ]

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote a blog post to explain why the server hardware maker has changed its stock ticker from SUNW to JAVA, emphasizing its Java programming language and software suite. Luckily, he left comments enabled on the post, leading to gems like this: "This is a move right out of the Dilbert school of management." [Jonathan's Blog via Fake Steve]

At Fortune's iMeme conference, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz repeats a tired old quote about how he likes to drink wine from a bottle while his predecessor, Scott McNealy, drinks wine out of a box. Quips a News.com reporter: "Maybe they should hire someone who likes to drink wine out of a glass and see where that takes them." [News.com]

Linux creator Linus Torvalds vs. lush-locked Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. "What I'm trying to do here is wake people up who seem to be living in some dream-world where Sun wants to help people." [crn.com]

A skillet, a microwave, and thee

Sun Microsystems' loitering chairman Scott McNealy, when asked about the dining preferences of Jonathan Scwartz (his successor as Sun CEO):

I eat to refuel. To him, it's an experience. ... I probably wouldn't remember where we went. You're wasting money on a good meal with me. With a skillet and a microwave, I can cook just about anything I want to eat. ... Son of a gun. I don't think that cheapskate has taken me out to dinner. That's why I hired him. He's cheap.

And let's not forget that awesome ponytail. More »

Loose Wires: Have you seen my license plate?

• "Sorry I haven't posted on my blog..." [the f blog via Boing Boing]
• "Delivering eyeballs to advertisers," 27-year-old founders, excitement about search engine optimization, middleman status, and stretched comparisons to MySpace and YouTube — which is your favorite sign that New York Times subject Oversee.net is a Bubble 1.0 company trapped in Bubble 2.0? [NY Times]
• Have you seen a California license plate reading "Web Geek"? Can you return it to this driver? [Backup Brain]
• In the midst of Silicon Valley's stock option backdating scandal, remember how legal backdating works. [Fortune]
• Leah Culver, she of the ad-supported MacBook Pro, coded the Benniferizer. Sure, you could use it to hook up your lovey-dovey's name (Leah assures me she doesn't see what's entered), or you could play dot-com matchmaker. Sun + Apple = Supple. [Benniferizer]
• Professional trendwatcher watchers find that the wisdom of the few can outweigh the wisdom of the crowds, which means the last five years have just been leading us back to respect for experts. [Washington Post]
• Sun CEO Jon Schwartz says he's too badass for Moore's Law. [CRN]

Jon Schwartz caption awards: You can't keep a good tail down

Valleywag readers, congrats on your your reactions to the NY Times photo of Sun's CEO gazing into space! Commenter wagsport, yours was just weird, so you get banned. The rest of you, seek therapy. More »

Caption contest: What is Jon "Ponytail" Schwartz thinking?

The CEO of Sun Microsystems appears in this photo from the New York Times, gazing up at the headline, or trying to tan his forehead with the flourescents, or — what the hell is Jon Schwartz, famous executive blogger and ponytail wearer, doing? More »

Sun's CEO could become blog hero when he asks the SEC for a big change

Much as we love to make fun of Jonathan Schwartz (and his role as lame-duck interim CEO of Sun Microsystems), the dude is pretty good at blogging. So it's actually neat that Schwartz faxed the chairman of the SEC last week asking him to acknowledge blogs as a viable place for a company to disclose info like new deals and quarterly earnings. More »

You may have missed: An awkward chat with the CEO of Sun Microsystems

Didn't notice until today, but blogger Robert Scoble's recent interview of Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz (part of Scoble's new "ScobleShow") is delightfully awkward but revealing. More »

Morning notes: Now if only he'd blog about his hair

• MTV, in an effort to prove that the level of discourse in a virtual world can indeed get stupider than World of Warcrafters asking "how i mine for fish," will launch "Virtual Laguna Beach" for boob-tubers who can't be sexy and carefree beach-goers in the real world. [NY Times]
• It was wrong to doubt that Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz (pictured), proud owner of a house "on the edge of the Mission district" and wearer of a "look how different I am" ponytail, was anything but a hipster. He tells the Associated Press that he asks colleagues if they've read his blog. Yep, just like every trustafarian in San Francisco. [Washington Post]
• Telecom Italia buys the German division of AOL for $855 million. The company thought it was bidding on a rare AOL 1.0 floppy disk. [NY Times]
• "What does it say about the boom in social networking Web sites that the latest one to attract outside investors is devoted not to singles or indie bands but to dogs?" It says Dogster's users don't realize the point of getting a dog — to meet people in the park, dammit, not on Internet message boards. [NY Times]

Doerr's out and Sun's about to sell

"(I) resigned for more time with family," board member John Doerr said when he announced he's leaving the board of Sun Microsystems. (Translation: "I've made all the money I can.") The prominent venture capitalist pumped up the insolvent company, saying it's in "great shape." More »

Razor burn: Why Sun wants GM to give cars away

Tech writer David Utter is the latest to draw a common parallel for Sun's future business model: More »

Loose wires: Such, such were the Joys

• The Sun hosts an exclusive Webchat with Marissa Mayer, Google's Director of Consumer Products. Our first question for the lovely Marissa: Google bitching aside, just how miffed is she that we excluded her from our Web 2.0 Hotties Competition? [The Sun Online]
• Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy bought a boat, says Fortune. How will Daniel Gross shoehorn this into his Yacht Index? [Fortune, flip to the ToC]
• By the way, if the Yacht Index can get a Slate writer on national TV, what can the Ponytail Index do? [The Tech Chronicles]

I'm. Too sexy for my tie. So sexy I could die.

The CEO of Sun Microsystems found a new friend! Jonathan "it's hip to be a square" Schwartz gleefully blogged Sunday: More »

Tony Blair meets the entire Silicon Valley pantheon

Unroll your conspiracy theory maps and pull out your markers — here are the Valley bigwigs who met with Tony Blair during the UK Prime Minister's recent visit to Silicon Valley, culled from the SF Chronicle and Mercury News. More »

Sun exec loves the kinder, gentler touch of the Ponytail CEO

At the end of an interview, Forbes asked Sun CIO Bill Vass (pictured here on High School Portrait Day) how new CEO Jon Schwartz is different than his predecessor Scott McNealy. He answered — in Valleyspeak, natch. Let's dissect. More »

Crazy uncle update: Sleepy, Grumpy, and Doc

Here's a hit of news for all you crazy-uncle-watchers out there. More »

Questions that no one asked at Supernova

There's an ulterior motive to opening an official backchannel at a tech conference. It pulls all the dissenters into a virtual room, where they disseminate their snide remarks safely away from the real discussion. More »

Jon Schwartz at Supernova: Liveblogging the ponytail

Sun Micrososystems interim-but-doesn't-know-it-yet CEO Jon Schwartz kicks off the Thursday talks at the Supernova 2006 conference. He opens with a little speech about Moore's Law as it applies to Sun's data center innovations (and clogging the conference wifi by streaming the World Cup). More »

"Ponytail" Schwartz chops off thousands of jobs this week

The penny drops for thousands of Sun employees Thursday morning, according to ZDNet columnist Tom Foremski. CEO Jon Schwartz (pictured) will announce a round of layoffs, part of the 4000 to 5000 layoffs Sun promised in May. More »

How to survive Mash Pit, Supernova, Bloggercon, and BarCamp this week

Hoo boy, four San Francisco conferences in one week! Starting with today's MashPit, this week is a con junkie's dream, as long as you have a guide to getting through. More »

Spotted: Ponytail with Jon Schwartz attached

His hair can run, but it can't hide — the Sun CEO's ponytail precedes him in this celeb sighting. More »

Valleyspeak: If you talk about his ponytail, Jon Schwartz will let you stroke it

Jonathan Schwartz speaks his own language, where "the edge of the Mission" means "a big house on Church Street" and "try and buy" means "General Motors should be a phone company." So his new Forbes Q&A needs some Valleyspeak interpretation. Here are translations for the tough bits. More »

Jon Schwartz is a Noe poser

While Jon Schwartz is going all "Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got," he's redefining "the edge of the Mission District." Big-time tech writer John Markoff named the edgy San Fran hood as Schwartz's stompin' grounds in his glowing NY Times profile. But a local journalist says Schwartz lives (on a hill!) in Noe Valley, the decidedly classy — but oh so conventional — home of yuppies and stroller-pushers. Hey, it's not a palace in Atherton, but it ain't a flat above a taqueria. More »

Sun's Jon Schwartz wants to be indie

Freshly minted Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz tells NY Times writer John Markoff, "I belong to a club that exists around the world that says progress is made by the unconventional. And that is reflected in many things, whether it's where I choose to live or the company I work for..." Whoa, Jon, really? Sun Microsystems? Pretty indie there, dude. Pretty wild and new. More »