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Google to Buy Opera?
patro writes "Opera Watch writes Google is planning to buy the Opera browser. The source of the claim is Pierre Chappaz, the former president of Yahoo Europe. Google obviously can't buy Firefox, so Opera might be the next possible candidate." I can't begin to imagine why.
A little WHOIS action:
Sure, this is old news... but is it coming to fruition?
Yeah this is from a blog, and even the blog says 'An Opera official outright denied this claim, after I asked about it, saying "Rumors come and go. Google is not buying Opera."'
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Still early in development, and I don't know how excited big phone companies would be to use OSS (especially if using an Microsoft OS), but Mozilla has Minimo coming down the pipe. The existing preview builds already work in many Windows Mobile devices.
Sadly, my PDA isn't one of them.
Um, what forced banner ads thing? You always had the option of paying for Opera, people who actually bought it didn't have to see the ads. And even the ads for the free version have gone now. So... what's the grudge for? Do you hold a grudge against all non-free software? Or just the ones that also offer an ad-supported version?
There are only two real advantages I see that Firefox has. The first is its extension mechanism. The second is that it's open-source, and that one wouldn't really matter to Google if they were planning on buying Opera, since they could always open-source Opera once they've bought it.
In all other respects, I think Firefox is trailing Opera. Opera got all of these first, and in many cases, Firefox either doesn't do as good a job, or hasn't implemented it at all:
Not only that, but I just checked and an Opera download is ~4.1MB and a Firefox download is ~8.1MB.
So the advantage of going for Opera over Firefox is that it's much more technologically advanced. The Firefox advantage is sociological in nature, and Google certainly don't need any help in that department.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Opera runs comfortably on extremely low-end phones. WebCore does not.
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The first result for Googling 'adblock opera' brings up this page with a list of possibilities for adblock-like functionality within Opera. I've used the C++ Adblock for a long time with Opera and it does great.
As far as I know, Opera has extension-like functionality, you aren't stuck with the base browser if you don't want just the base browser. Don't see what much else you'd need other than Adblock, but lots of people swear by those Greasemonkey extensions, dunno if that's in Operaland yet.
Moral of the story (and many others): Google it, damnit.
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
Additionally, I don't think you can get Opera in "just the browser" flavor. Last time I checked, it forced you to download this really crappy email client of theirs and address book and other things.
It's small enough that the non-browser features don't add much to the app size, and current versions are willing to keep everything you don't use hidden and out of the way. When I use Opera it's "just the browser" and has no problem talking to Thunderbird or KMail for email.