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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.
Google is in a unique position to be a software developer that can create new applications before the market sees a need for them, and be a success at it. I believe they've found a great way to dismiss Microsoft back to the 90's and leave them in the dust.
Google is finding (in many ways) that they're running up against a standards wall. Gmail is very successful in part because of "AJAX" but you know there is more out there. Remember, these guys make software that is mostly server-hosted.
I can't imagine what google is working on next, but I have been contemplating their need for a "proof-of-concept" engine that would be considered a web browser to some, but in all reality it would be an operating system. This sub-operating system would be hardware abstracted from the real OS, but give Google the ability for power users to see what Google can do with data.
Opera makes sense to me. I wish they'd have more platforms supported (Pocket PC was surprisingly ignored until this past month) but it is very standards-oriented and gives Google a real opportunity to denounce Internet Explorer without coming out and saying it directly.
Google can't come out and make a new mini-OS "web browser" that supplies its own standards, so what they can do is take the browser that seems to follow the standards the closest, and adopt their applets to work perfectly in this standard browser. If IE can't run the software, Google can offer a reduced-capacity version of their applet for IE, and basically users who want the powerful one will dump IE for Google. That would be Google's first nail in Microsoft's coffin.
For anyone to think that Google doesn't have the desire to be the next Microsoft, you have to see how much money Google is burning to come up with the best and newest data aggregating applets. Microsoft can't keep up, and they're quickly losing the race to releasing new -- and NEEDED -- applications. Word, Excel, IE -- they're all old news. Google Earth, Google Maps, Google SMS, Google Blogsearch, they're all applications that can be enhanced even further if Google had a standard platform to write their uber-versions for. Opera can be that standard platform that extends Google from merely a website to becoming its own operating system.
mobile market, opera dominates there - google would love to be on every mobile platform.
LetterRip
C'mon, buy Wikipedia already. "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and Wikipedia fits that goal better than Google Groups does.
rumor: n, Unverified information received from another; hearsay.
That's one way to get the Google toolbar loaded on every browser shipped.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Consider... what if Google bought the code, opened it and the improvements dovetailed into one browser? Each currently has its strengths.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Seriously, why would you choose Opera over Firefox? The whole forced banner ads thing kind of drove me away from it (not that I ever used it, but it kept me from ever using it again even). Opera may be a fine browser, but we already have a really good (and open) thing going on with Firefox. 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.
What I *REALLY* don't get is the logic behind this. "Since they can't by Mozilla, they'll buy Opera".
Um. What? Mozilla is open-sourced. You don't HAVE to buy it. Just take the code and do your own thing with it. DUH.
I have a hard time believing they're going to intentionally wedge the browser market even further rather than back more work and collaboration and progress behind the already great open source browser that we have. Perhaps they just intend to buy it, strip it for some good stuff that they'll donate to Mozilla and... I dunno. Whatever else.
Seriously though - seems like a waste of money when they can just branch off from Mozilla. You know, with that sort of being the whole POINT of the license that Mozilla is under.
Currently, Google has included Firefox in their Adsense referral program. Google is paying $1/click to convert users to Firefox. Why on Earth would they invest millions in that only to buy a competitor? Something stinks here.
http://religiousfreaks.com/That's actually not a very logical line of thinking. If google.com is not viewable by IE, MS will blame google and ask users to use MSN search (Yes, MS is not sitting on their arses doing nothing about search). Also, please knock off the goddamn $ from the abbreviated Microsoft name - it's like the average 1990 slashdot geek is calling back for his witty abbreviation.
Mod parent up..... I think it's been unfairly trollimified.
It's a much more polished browser, IMHO. Firefox is great, but Opera still beats it in performance, resource usage and (most important) its terrific user interfase, IMHO. Once you get used to it, you just can't go back.
/. users that bash it now would be drooling all over it.
Give it a whirl - it's completely, 100% free for desktop users now, as you can get your own key for free on Operas' site. Don't diss it because it's not OSS. I still think that if Opera were open source, 99% of the
I'm curious. How can you know whether the code is clean, if it's closed source?
I don't really think this is likely, but I do take exception to this reasoning:
Remember when Apple hired a couple of Mozilla people? Everybody was saying that they were going to release a web browser based on Gecko. In the end, the fact that they were Mozilla people was a red herring, they were hired for their expertise in developing a browser, not their knowledge of Gecko specifically.
So no, I don't really see this happening, but that's mainly because Google don't need to buy Opera to accomplish their goals, not because they've hired a couple of Mozilla people. I think it's more likely that Google are partnering with Opera in the handheld market in some way, Opera's got a good position there and Google are expanding in that direction.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
One word: cellphones.
While Google may have firefox to lean on / depend on to counter IE on the desktop, there's no equivalent on the cellphone/pda side of things (at least nothing that's being used by the big phone makers). Cellphones are going to become increasingly important in connecting to the internet, and Google probably wants to make sure they're not squeezed out by MS and PocketIE. Opera has a pretty good footprint in the PDA / Cellphone world. If Google wants them this will be why.
FTS: "The source of the claim is Pierre Chappaz, the former president of Yahoo Europe"
/. more relevant with breaking news, but this isn't news. It's idle speculation.
l =url2html-4514http://www.blogger.com/profile/38486 32>
FTA: "Pierre Chappaz, the former president of Yahoo Europe, claims to have a source, whom he says is generally very well informed, who told him that Google is planning on buying the Opera web browser."
So someone tells someone something, and then that person tells someone else?
I admire the submitter for trying to make
Also, Chappaz was president of Yahoo Europe for about one month before he submitted his resignation, for personal reasons. His total tenure as president of Yahoo Europe? Less than two months. Here's his blog, which includes the source for TFA. It's in French. And he states that he's guessing that Google might want to in order to compete with MS.ahref=http://www.blogger.com/profile/3848632re
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
OK. Let's look at your argument.
Assume that Google wants to make a super-browser that is nicely-integrated into their services -- including advertising. They add a lot of cool features (who knows what, but let's imagine). They tie in to some advertising. Life is great!
But, it is open-source, so they release the source. Sombody takes the source, keeps the good stuff, and rips out the advertising. Now, Google is still serving up bandwidth, but not getting any advertising links. Huh. Looks like spent all of that time and effort for nothing (from a financial perspective).
So, this Opera thing, if true, makes sense.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and Wikipedia fits that goal better than Google Groups does.
WP might be better than Google Groups, but it certainly doesn't contribute to an organization of the "world's information." Rather, it's an organization of certain people's opinions about a handful of people, events, popular culture (yes, and some actual dry facts, too) etc., and a handful of people's spin on how to present it (or outright lie about it, depending on what time of day it is). "Organizing the world's information" suggests a certain amount of credibility, not the often-politically-tinged or outright loony stuff that rattles in and out of various state of quantum actualness on Wikipedia. Now, if Google bought the OED, or the Britannica, then we'd have something to chat about. Plus, I'd be willing to look at (and click on) AdSense ads in exchange for a regular romp through the OED. Yum... 2-page word definitions!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
There is no reason for them to purchase a browser and then open-source it. Trying to establish a developer's community around new code isn't a trivial task, and rewriting the current Opera code to make extending that code possible would be a significant resource sink which could be better used making the browser better, or adding functionality to mozilla.
Not that I think that google is really buying a browser, but the knee-jerk "open-source it" response is just ridiculous.
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. -Henry David Thoreau
It's not what's cheaper, it's what can they get on more hardware. Opera not only supports the usual OS's (Windows, OSx, Solaris, Linux, and on and on) they are also a big player in the mobile market. This would get google a jump into the mobile market that MS and Yahoo can't touch at the moment, not to mention massive support across current PC platforms.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
(Note to mods: How "insightful" are comments made about a product by a person who's never used the product going to be?)
Opera has never forced banner ads on anyone. Currently, you can download the browser free, with no banner ads. Prior to a few months ago, you could pay (gasp) and not have to put up with the banners. In either case, it's your choice.
Which swelled the download file to, what?, 3.7mb? Looks like the Firefox download is 5mb. You're not forced to use the e-mail client, address book, etc. Hell, until you mentioned them, I'd forgotten they existed. Moreover, Opera, "out of the box", comes with many bells-and-whistles that are only available to Firefox as plug-ins. I'd rather do one install and have things just work, than have to download a half-dozen other bits, install them, and then pray that they don't break when the next FF version comes out.
Opera is not new on the scene: it predated FF by many years. Many features in FF (most famously, tabbed browsing) were in Opera far earlier. Opera is light, fast, stable, ready-to-roll out of the box. No, it's not open source, but it's silly to think that code is high quality if and only if it's open source. We already have a good thing going on with Opera.
If "wedging the browser market" is really your concern, then I'm surprised that you are so loyal to a relative late-comer to the market, and can't be bothered to look at a high-quality, non-IE browser that has been on the market for many more years.
Google is hoping to strike a balance between:
Get ready for a huge amount of intertie for targeted information at the Google level. Yahoo+Amazon with lots of slick tools. I see google coming to the table with incredible market-stealing bundling with nice Apple-like tools. Perhaps not a winner, but Google is waiting for all the AOL-ish [l]users to look for something new and cool.
Thanks to their Ajax prowess, Google can set themselves up as the provider of any kind of software you can think of... with two exceptions. You need an operating system and a browser to be a Google consumer. Why not go ahead and take care of one of those? They're just increasing the amount of the stack that they control.
Makes sense, right?
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
I'm curious. How can you know whether the code is clean, if it's closed source?
The same way you can tell a person, plant, or even a car is (relatively) healthy: by the way it operates on the outside. Ok, so. If a car is nearly broken down, you'll see lots of smoke going out its rear end. If a plant is nearly broken down you'll see it withering away and possibly yellowing at the wrong time of year. And if a person is nearly broken down you'll see them coughing, and hacking, and sneezing, and nose-running.
We know MS Windows wasn't exactly clean code back in '95 because it always BSOD'd on use and had segmentation faults everywhere with dangling pointers and crap.
And we can tell Opera has good, clean code on the inside because it doesn't produce the effects of bad, dirty code on the outside.
What did they call that biology? Genotypes vs Phenotypes? Yes. By the phenotype we can tell at least a part of the story.
Seriously, why would you choose Opera over Firefox?
After having Firefox and Opera open all day at work (working on company's website), Firefox (v1.5) is currently taking up about 76MB of memory while Opera (v8.5) is sitting at around 22MB. And, Opera has a built-in mail client which I happen to like.
That's why I choose Opera over Firefox.
Slackware
Clever signature text goes here.
One more followup:d al/
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/pervasive/multimo
shows binaries for Windows on ipaq/pocketpc, and Linux/Zaurus. The former is unhelpful, the latter I'll take a look at tonight.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
My favorite is how Opera Watch says "I must say that I find this very hard to believe," goes on to explain how unlikely it is and what might be behind the rumor, and somehow Slashdot turns it into "Opera Watch says this will happen!"
Netscape didn't have loads of cash like Google and they certainly couldn't execute worth a damn.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
They don't need a browser of their own, but they need a competitive browser market. Firefox, thus, is very important to them -- even if it never gains a majority market share, it forces Microsoft to improve IE again. Opera may have a similar strategic value, especially because on mobile phones it seems like it's mostly Opera or something proprietary, and proprietary means that Google could be locked out or extorted to provide access fees. It doesn't matter that much to them if another browser does well on mobile phones, just like it doesn't matter that much if Firefox or IE win, so long as they have a quality browser(s) available.
I also sometimes wonder how Opera is really doing financially. If they are strapped for cash -- and I have zero idea how they are doing -- that may limit their ability to improve the product, or even the viability of the product entirely. So Google might just be trying to keep the market healthy (from their perspective) by keeping different products in the play.