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Dvorak Says MS Should Buy Opera
patro writes "Should MS beef up cranky old Internet Explorer for today's standards? Dvorak thinks buying Opera would be a smarter move. It works on all the major platforms including the Mac which IE won't support anymore and $400 million for it is pocket money for Microsoft."
A nice secondary benefit from acquiring Opera would be all their mobile browsing tech. Am I wrong in thinking they make more dough from the mobile device stuff than the regular browser?
They can stuff it with their links, write in their ActiveX/DLL extensions, make a better Windows-like skin... whatever.
Of course, I can't imagine them risking putting open source software in such a high-visibility area, but a web developer can dream.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
This guy proves he is once again off his rocker. IE 7, even in beta (with the latest builds of Vista), is a damn fine browser. Better than even Firefox/Mozilla dare I say it. Microsoft's browser team is doing just fine on its own.
I don't use either IE7 or Firefox but so what? IE7 is a "damn fine browser" for now... IE overtook Netscape because it was the better browser at the time that MS was using other tactics to force its wide and successful adoption.
Do you really think that IE7 will continue to be a "damn fine browser" when the masses begin using it and the spammers, hackers, and phishers decide it's now viable enough to heavily exploit?
Microsoft doesn't want a very nice UI for the web unless they control it. If the standards supported a nice neat replacement for your typical win32 gui then Microsoft is pretty much out of business as they currently stand. It's inevitable that the web GUI encroaches on win32 GUI applitions hence why MS is getting more and more into online services. The writing is on the wall and they'll resist the writing as long as possible - which means a crippled IE with lagging features for all of us.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
I'm sure they could get it to work in Vista.... As an application.
Of course if they could do that it'd prove that all the "IEs part of the OS and can't be removed" stuff was bunk. Wheter that's actually provable already is also up for debate.
I have IE, Firefox, and Opera on my systems, and IE is consistently the fastest and least crash prone. I understand that IE has had security vulnerabilities, but, well, so have all the others just as soon as they gained some popularity. Sure, each have some nice features that IE don't, like built-in popup blockers and a password remembering feature that actually works, but all those things I have better any way free IE add-ons.
I just don't see any real technical / usbility reason to switch. Plus, if i type "C:\" in the address bar of IE, it looks normal and usable, not like firefox, which puts me in the wayback machine to 1994 UI land, so I can actually interoperate between my local PC and web browsing easily.
If you look at it from an abstract and high enough view, there's little difference to looking at a directory on your hard drive and one on an HTTP or FTP server. *NIX mount points are the kind of the same way; it doesn't matter if its a resource on your system or another.
The proclimation, however, that the operating environment couldn't function without IE involved was (giving undue benefit-of-doubt) probably based on shared code and functionality that would have required them to either duplicate bits, or compile two copies; one with network savvy and one without.
Konquerer will allow me to browse my mounted resources and the Internet without any real extra effort on my part (really, just a few extra characters typed separate HTTP from NFS), but KDE doesn't kick the crap out of Firefox or Opera if it's installed.
End the FUD
Er, how is Microsoft wrong to keep IE? It has about 85% of the browser market. I must have missed in business school how a browser with 2% market share should replace one with 85% is somehow "better".
Pundits have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to Microsoft. Microsoft knows what they are doing: their OS runs about 95% of the desktops worldwide, and they are making sigificant inroads in the cellphone, handheld, home entertainment and server markets. Their net profit runs over $1 BILLION dollars a MONTH! Yet somehow, they are doing it all wrong and need advice from a guy who probably doesn't make $200k a year.
Actually, one of Microsoft's classic tricks is tricking their compeititors into investing in white elephants. As seen recently when they bid up the price of AOL before feeding it to Google.
However, Opera might have some value to MS on PocketPC. It has no real value to Google.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I can't see that happening, giving up on IE would show people that its not viable for anything anymore and they would lose people who wouldn't come back for the "new" IE browser.
If they did buy Opera, I would stop using it in a second and go with Firefox. I would be very sad to lose such an amazing browser. Thankfully, I don't see this as a problem.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
Opera has (had?) some great developers. They don't get the credit they deserve for innovation
Now THERE you're really hitting the point, but not even completely. It's not just their innovating new features, but the performance they're able to achieve with their application. The speed and memory requirements are fantastic compared to everything else out there. IE and FF can't touch Opera for memory usage OR speed (in most cases).
I just wish it's renderer was better; it produces goofy results too often. I'd like to see them take the Gecko renderer and run it through the Opera-resource-debigulator(tm) and use that in Opera. I'd also like them to make an email client that doesn't require 30Meg of RAM, and actually performs at a reasonable speed. Ugh. Let's hope Thunderbird 1.5 is a big improvement in the performance arena, though I have no hope it'll be anything other than worse in the resource requirements arena.
First time I've heard of that..
.Net, WebTV, C#, Citrix, SoftPC, Hotmail, the list goes on.. It's the Story of Microsoft - all the way back to DOS.
Usually it seems that Microsoft buys out a company that is most enticing to it's competitors, then turning that heralded technology into a White Elephant on their own.
If they can't buy it, they re-implement it - badly.
IE, Xbox, J++,
What they can't come up with on their own, they imitate or buy.
more.
Google could do good with Opera. The only reason Microsoft would buy it is to suffocate it in a dark closet.
Worst idea? From a standards standpoint, it is a great idea. Opera is perhaps the most standards compliant browser out there. So developers would stop complaining that IE isn't standards compliant.Imagine, all the webmill people would shut up. Further, they could beef up Opera, and give it some access to those belove Microsoft API's, give it the packaging of Microsoft and well, now the browser wars have been won, all over again, before most of mainstream people even knew that that there was an arms built up. Instead of having to reinvent the Internet Explorer, they have effectively bought a browser, repackaged it, and shut up all the people that hate it. Think about it. I don't use Opera, but I don't have anything against it. Do you? A lot of people have problems with IE because of the Spyware and Security problems. Unless Opera is really buggy, it could provide a really nice code base for them to pound Mozilla. And I like Mozilla. And I am writing this from my Linux box.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Yeah, Netscape released their source code just before they got swallowed by AOL. Now may be as good a time as any for Opera to do exactly the same...
several companies depends on opera's browser. Can you think of mobile phones that does NOT use winCE?
...or, get together to fund open source development of a new browser :)
buying opera, M$ will remove the ground bellow them. Then to have a browser back or those companies develop their own, or ditch the OS and follow the flock with winCE.
As usual, Dvorak's knowledge of the topic at hand is shallow and his conclusions are simplistic and short sighted.
Microsoft is not interesting in gaining browser market share outside of the Windows platform. Sure, they might be able to steer more people toward MSN and thereby make more in advertising revenue, but how much more? If 90% of the market already uses Windows, and gaining that extra 10% is fairly difficult for a wide variety of reasons, it may not be worth it to them.
Even if it was, it has nothing to do with why Microsoft dropped support for the Mac. The direction Microsoft is taking IE is different than the direction everybody else is taking web browsers. Microsoft sees IE as an application that will allow users to access both web pages and smart client applications.
They see the future as a mesh of standard web apps and smart client applications created with things like ClickOnce (at first), and eventually IE-hosted Avalon applications. (WPF.) Their hope is that eventually the line between web apps and client apps will blur, and since it will be (they hope) via IE and Avalon, it will draw even more people to using Windows since the UI/functionality experience is so much better than standard web applications. At least that's the business point of view.
Actually, I think it is the other way around: IE is a part of the OS because OS provided APIs are based on it.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
As a full-time Opera user, I barely ever have problems with websites (but sure, I don't often compare the way they're rendered to IE/firefox). As a designer, I have far few problems getting what I want in Opera/FF than in IE [obligatory 10 lines of frustration-driven foul language cut off by ./ filters]. So yes, for designers such deal would be a Good Thing (I can't see that happening, though).
On the other side, I'm really used to O and I'd have a bit of a hard time having to switch to FF/Epiphany/whatever else (already tried and there are dozens of little things that annoy me, like being unable to find a way to use google straight from address bar, it's g string in O)... and certainly couldn't look in the mirror if I decided to stay with my favorite browser in case it would have "where do you want to go today?" thingy as a splash screen.
No, you're wrong. Opera previously made their money selling their browser or including ads in it. Now Google pays them for every Google search done using Opera's search functionalities. This gives Opera enough cash to give their browser away, and will probably make them more in the end as their browser is more widely accepted now that it is free. Mozilla does the exact same thing. Google has paid the Mozilla Foundation millions of dollars for Google searches done with Mozilla browsers.
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
My EXACT same thoughts. I have been using Opera for the last few years and I loooove everything about it. I would be very afraid if MS were to purchase Opera for fear that it will get neglected and/or bloated with useless features like a lot of MS products. I would prefer that it stay with a company dedicated to innovating their product and with a vision qouting directly from the Opera website:
"Opera's vision is to deliver the best Internet experience on any device."
I use both MS and non-MS OS's/software so I am not a MS hater. I actually think Windows XP Pro is a pretty good, stable OS. I also really like using Visual Studio for C/C++ development, it has its quirks but so does any software. I just would hate to see my beloved browser fall to pieces.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.