It’s been a little over a year since Oracle took over Sun. However, the Sun signs outside the Santa Clara campus have languished the entire year, until now. Starting last week the Sun signs have been taken down, and they’re being replaced by Oracle signs. Finally.
Around the time of the takeover I was sure that the signs would be torn down immediately, so I went and took a bunch of pictures before anything happened to them. Here’s what a couple of the signs looked like originally. (Click any image for a larger view.)
I always thought the signs were pretty cool. They were even lit up at night. Uh-oh, looks like one had a light burned out that nobody bothered to replace.
I was surprised that nothing happened to the signs for a couple months after the takeover. Then, somebody probably realized that something should say “Oracle” and so had a white tarp with the Oracle logo on it placed over one of the signs. This was in April 2010.
Boy, that was ugly. I don’t have a picture, but you could still see the backlit Sun logo shining through the tarp at night. Fortunately it didn’t last long. I don’t think it was vandalized or anything. A flimsy tarp sitting outside in the sun and wind every day would never have lasted very long. It started to tear after a few weeks, and it was taken down.
Now, the signs still said “Sun” on them. What to do? Looks like they spray-painted over the Sun logos — at least they matched the color — and removed the light bulbs from the signs. Even though they were no longer backlit, they were still quite readable.
That was way back in May 2010. They stayed this way for a long time. Finally, last week, crews moved in and started taking down the signs. They were piled ignominiously in the overflow parking lot at the edge of the campus.
Oh, it looks like they hadn’t actually removed the light bulbs:
Where the signs had been there were only holes in the ground or ugly concrete pads:
They’ve now started to install Oracle signs. As of a couple days ago, only one had been put up.
Meet the new boss, the same as the old boss
— or —
I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords.
Take your pick.
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Excellent! You never cease to amaze me, Stuart, with your thoughtful histories. I’m glad you got pictures of each stage, it is quite fun to read through. I thought the spray paint was a bit much, only slightly better I guess than the tarp.
The new signs are nice (pretty modern look, clean lines, stainless steel look at the base). However the red doesn’t work well with the other colors on campus, such as the mustardy yellow color of the buildings. Maybe they’ll paint them.