Sun Enters Microsoft’s Orbit

Strug­gling Sun Microsys­tems reached a sweep­ing, $1.6 bil­lion set­tle­ment with Microsoft and said Fri­day it plans to cooper­ate with its long­time nemesis, a com­pany it had branded an unre­pent­ant monopolist

Although I’d hardly call the agree­ment enter­ing their orbit. More like agree­ing to stop fighting.

“Our com­pan­ies will con­tinue to com­pete hard, but this agree­ment cre­ates a new basis for cooper­a­tion that will bene­fit the cus­tom­ers of both com­pan­ies,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief exec­ut­ive officer.

This, how­ever, is bey­ond my com­pre­hen­sion:

Sun, once a shin­ing star of Sil­icon Val­ley, also said it expects rev­enue for the quarter ended March 28 to be approx­im­ately $2.65 bil­lion. The net loss will be between $750 mil­lion and $810 mil­lion, or 23 cents to 25 cents per share.

How can you take $2.65 bil­lion in a quarter and still lose money?