Opera's CEO to Swim From Norway to the USA

Viggeh! writes "An overly excited Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software, today proclaimed at an internal company meeting that if the download numbers of the new Opera 8 Web browser reach 1 million within the first four days of the launch, he will swim from Norway to the USA with only one stop-over for a cup of hot chocolate at his mother's house in his home country, Iceland. The new browser was released Tuesday and was downloaded 600.000 times in the first 48 hours since release. The challenge will end on Saturday at 0900 a.m. CET, so if you want to try out some new software and make the CEO stick to his big words, download it at Opera's webpage(direct link)."

Comments

Direct Link to Win32 version

[Leknor]

For such a geek heavy site as /. you'd think a download link would be to a platform select page and not the windows installer.

Here is a better download link: http://www.opera.com/download/ Unfortunately not all platforms have an Opera 8 download yet.

One word:

[p3d0]

Wetsuit.

Yeah, but which norway

[rde]

Being the suspicious slashdotter that I am, I suspected that a) there was a town in Norway called USA (unlikely), or b) there was a town in America called Norway (almost certain).

Sure enough, there's Norway, Maine.

Shouldn't take him that long.

Read the press release

[Tom]

You should really read the press release that is on their main site.

It's so much tongue-in-cheek that it stops just short of saying outright "yes, it's a joke".

Then again, it's very refreshing to see that a corporate PR department can still get away with cheap shots at the CEO. Choice quote: "However, having seen Jon in his red beach attire before, I am not sure if swimming to the USA is scarier than exposing people to this sight."