diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index dcaba89bf0..f22f079693 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -59,6 +59,9 @@ Trunk (unreleased changes)
 
     HADOOP-7721. Add log before login in KerberosAuthenticationHandler. (jitendra)
 
+    HADOOP-6490. Use StringUtils over String#replace in Path#normalizePath.
+    (Uma Maheswara Rao G via harsh)
+
 Release 0.23.0 - Unreleased
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/fs/Path.java b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/fs/Path.java
index 8ac3b6ae53..6c0522360c 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/fs/Path.java
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/fs/Path.java
@@ -18,10 +18,12 @@
 
 package org.apache.hadoop.fs;
 
-import java.net.*;
-import java.io.*;
-import org.apache.avro.reflect.Stringable;
+import java.io.IOException;
+import java.net.URI;
+import java.net.URISyntaxException;
 
+import org.apache.avro.reflect.Stringable;
+import org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils;
 import org.apache.hadoop.classification.InterfaceAudience;
 import org.apache.hadoop.classification.InterfaceStability;
 import org.apache.hadoop.conf.Configuration;
@@ -157,8 +159,8 @@ private void initialize(String scheme, String authority, String path,
 
   private String normalizePath(String path) {
     // remove double slashes & backslashes
-    path = path.replace("//", "/");
-    path = path.replace("\\", "/");
+    path = StringUtils.replace(path, "//", "/");
+    path = StringUtils.replace(path, "\\", "/");
     
     // trim trailing slash from non-root path (ignoring windows drive)
     int minLength = hasWindowsDrive(path, true) ? 4 : 1;