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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.
If they do buy opera will they call it google browser beta and only let it be usable by windows?
Absurd rumor mongering at its best/worst. If Google really wanted to get into the browser arena, why wouldn't they just create their own based on the open (And most importantly, FREE) Gecko engine?
I can't begin to imagine why.
My favorite thing about Slashdot is that the article summaries are so objective.
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.
Modest, too!
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 has been known for some time that google registered gbroswer.com. Could this simply be the beginning of the Google Browser?
A little WHOIS action:
Sure, this is old news... but is it coming to fruition?
You can't? I can...
Microsoft has announced an intention to kill Google. (All right, Ballmer said so to a guy who was leaving to go to Google. Same difference.) Microsoft has made some announcements of stuff to compete with Google. Microsoft also controls the most-used browser.
Add it all up, and I can sure see why Google might want to have a (better, but less popular) browser under their control...
The man's been married for a while now. By this point, slashdot is the only thing left in his life over which he has any control. I say we all turn a blind eye to a little editorializing from the man, considering it's the only way he can feel like one anymore.
Reasons to buy Opera:
1. Opera is a fast browser with clean code. Fits with google quality requirements/desires.
2. Opera is closed source. Google can add secret sauce for tracking or search or ad related reasons.
3. Opera can be made into a product to compete with MS without giving away the source to competitors.
Search Me.
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
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.
(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.
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.
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