Sun Micro up on planned Google collaboration

Sun Microsystems Inc. stock rose Monday after the struggling technology company said it would be announcing a collaboration with Internet search giant Google Inc. at a press conference Tuesday.

Shares of Sunk, which is based in Santa Clara, California, rose 26 cents, or 6.9 percent, to $4.20 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Sun declined to comment on the nature of the collaboration ahead of the press conference, which will include Sun Chief Executive Scott McNealy and Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.

Investors suspect that the announcement will concern a sale of Sun's recently launched Galaxy servers, the technology company's first foray into commodity servers.

"There's a good chance that Google might be buying Galaxy servers and Google consumes a lot of servers," said Mona Eraiba, an analyst with Rosetta Group Research. "This could be very significant for Sun, which has been flat on its back for some time."

The analyst doesn't own shares of Sun or Google, and her firm doesn't perform investment-banking service.

Google representatives weren't immediately available to comment.

Google and Sun have a connection that dates back to at least 1998. Andy Bechtelsheim, one of Sun's founders and the architect of the Galaxy line of servers, was one of the first outside investors in Google, writing the startup a check for $100,000 (Ђ83,800) and helping Google get off the ground.

Shares of Google, which is based in Mountain View, California, rose $1.88, or 0.6 percent, to $318.22 on the Nasdaq, AP reported.