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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.
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.
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?
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.
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."
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.
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
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