Oracle acquires Sun - even for Oracle, this is gutsy

I think this one surprised me even more than the announcement of the sale of my own division. New York Times:

The Oracle Corporation, the technology information company, announced Monday that it would acquire a rival, Sun Microsystems, for $9.50 a share, or about $7.4 billion.

More here. Oracle acquires businesses on a fairly regular basis, but this is one that definitely got my attention. Even the New York Times writer and editor were apparently flabbergasted by the deal:

Over the past few years, however, Oracle has moved to make Hewlett-Packs and Dell stronger allies, as Sun’s business has declined.

Hewlett-Packs. Heh. Do they only come with the Enterprise Edition?

Perhaps Oracle has acquired a hardware vendor before and I've missed it, but this is still unusual. More importantly than hardware, however, Oracle now owns Java.

This will take some absorbing to see where we end up after this deal closes.

[SEE SUBSEQUENT POST. I MISSED ONE LITTLE DETAIL.]