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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."
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
(filler text to get around message filters)
...Dvorak is a hack...so, there you have it.
Last week everyone thought Opera was being bought by Google. So now its obvious that MS should buy it first to keep it out of the hands of Google.
Microsoft doesn't want their stuff to work on all other platforms... After all, they intentionally discontinued work on IE for mac, and have bought several companies only to immediately axe their Linux offerings.
Microsoft is not a company selling apps, Microsoft is a company selling lock-in. As long as customers are sticking with them, they don't really need to spend "pocket change" to keep up with technology.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
Wow! That's the best idea I've ever heard. There should be absolutely no problems shoehorning it into Vista by next year. Way to go, Dvorak! You deserve a raise!
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Then after the "MS Opera" release, firefox would have even less competition.
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?
Dvorak has apparently forgotten all the work that Microsoft put into stuffing Internet Explorer and its components into every unlikely corner of the Windows operating systems. You can't just easily rip that out and replace it with a new browser..
Opera can be uninstalled.
Wouldn't this be in violation of antitrust laws? Microsoft can't just buy out all of their competition out there. I don't think the government would allow it. At least they shouldn't. That's why I like Open Source, Because you can't buy it out. I think this is Microsofts greatest fear. A competitor they can't defeat, simply by buying it out.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This makes me think I overestimated him.
MS chooses to stop supporting the Mac with IE. For whatever reason, they think that's in their best interest. Now Dvorak thinks that's MS should spend $400M to abandon the browser they've been pushing for 10 years, to buy one that supports an OS they just walked away from.
MS hasn't even stopped supoport for IE yet, just annouced it. If they changed their mind and think it's such a big mistake, they can continue IE on MacOS.
But it would be a terrible move from a PR perpective. It would be like admitting they're not able to program a decent browser; they'd look like they're buying the small guy, which many less-than-rational people think is a very bad thing to do; and the user experience would be so much different than what they're used to. Let's not forget Opera has always been years in advance of the competition - heck, they were teh cool way back in version 3.
Global warming is a cube.
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
He's just another utterly clueless pundit. To have them buy Opera is to admit that they didn't have what it takes to secure and extend the thing. MS flatly won't be inclined to do that if they can help it- this suggestion is in the same class as saying MS ought to do a Linux version of MS Office.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Unlikely. Opera isn't compatible with Microsoft's business strategy since it implements web standards.
1. Write some code 2. Slip Dvorak some free booze 3. Get bought by Microsoft for "pocket change" 4. Move to Grand Cayman
Ehh...this is the life we chose.
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?
I'm pretty sure the point is that if MS buys Opera, it would not be to add a browser to the financial portfolio, but to have a more secure browser. MSOpera would form the basis of the next gen of IE, which would still be given away for free.
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.
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.
Why does Dvorak even make it on here? I'm not trying to troll, just noticing that every Dvorak post made is a HUGE flamewar against his ignorance in computing. I mean, sure, he can have his opinion. But why does it make slashdot EVERY single time he makes a comment?
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
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.
He could be their mascot, and beat up the Linux penguin and the Mac... whatever the hell that thing is in the Mac logo.
Microsoft already covered this when they based IE on Mosaic years ago. Mosaic used to run on more platforms. They could just take the Opera code base and do the same thing they did with Mosaic, knee-cap and labotomize it.
Seriously though, I think it's one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. I don't see why MS should want to sink so much money into something that they already have and don't really make money on anyway. It may be pocket change for MS at this point, but that doesn't mean they should throw their pocket change in the gutter. The future not incredibly rosey for this point, they need better planning than to buy someone elses product that does the same thing as something they already have. You may not like IE, but it's good enough for the majority of users. I'm not trying to evangelize MS BTW, I'm writing this message through Firefox.
I disassembled it for you:
NOP
...
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
Fascinating, and, oh, look! Dvorak is little endian!
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.
Well said.
I have often wondered the same thing. IE is quite usable, and quite nice.
Firefox and Opera are great, and I use them both a lot of the time, but I also use IE often. On a Windows machine, IE seriously has some benefits that FF does not. For instance, doing an ftp://foobar gets me a nice interface in IE. In FF, Fireftp crashes so often that I stopped using it. As for adblocking, Google toolbar gives me the same thing. If you are careful about your security settings, IE can also be a safe browser.
Not to mention running Java applets. Firefox seems to hang/crash everytime a Java applet is run, and has serious trouble handling Java. You'd think that IE would be having this problem, not FF. And on a system with low memory, FF simply crashes way more often, it's easier and faster to use IE. Worse yet, FF's memory management on slower and older systems sucks.
Now, obviously both the browsers have advantages and disadvantages, but seriously, IE isn't so bad as most folks here make it out to be. But for the security vulnerabilities, IE is a nice browser that is quite nice and usable.
While I'd put Firefox above IE, that definitely does not make it a bad browser.
Opera has been completely free (as in Beer http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/20/121723 2&from=rss) with no ads for a while now... I am really surprised how few people actually use it.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Dvorak claims that IE doesn't support tabbed browsing, but he doesn't allude to the very well-known features that are being included in IE 7. IE 7 supports tabbed browsing and is available in a private beta. (I'm using it right now.) Microsoft also is creating a Phishing filter. (I don't know what kind of anti-phishing effort Opera is making.)
Personally, I see a browser as something like a car stereo. IE and Safari are "stock"; Opera and Firefox are "aftermarket". Creating a Mac version of IE is a considerable effort that won't bring any revenue to Microsoft. It will also hinder a browser-neutral web as web developers can just tell Mac users to "Download IE".
In addition, Dvorak's statement about Microsoft waiting for the x86 Mac to port IE shows that he really doesn't understand the difference between computer platforms today. Computer programs, especially GUI intensive ones like web browsers, are easily ported among many CPUs because they are written in high-level languages. They are difficult to port among different operating systems because the GUI APIs are very different.
No, I will not work for your startup
Well now that you mention it, I occasionally need to run IE at work. Instead of booting into Windows, I run IE using Wine under Fedora Core 4.
I wish I could say it worked great. It doesn't. But it works well enough that I can modify server side rule in exchange by using the Web interface. Yes, the web interface works in non-ie browsers, but doesn't handle enhanced mode -- so you can't do things like make rules. And, evolution doesn't implement exchange server side rules.
I also need to use ie to enter my vacation time. Sigh.
IE works under wine. Most of the functionality works. Occasionally something doesn't. The window flashes a lot. It does crash regularly.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
When I read the headline, I immediately thought, "yeah, right." Love or hate MS, IE 6 usability and look and feel pretty much kicks ass.
What?... What?!?
IE 6 is crap, through and through. It doesn't even have tabbed browsing. It is ugly. It violates plenty of basic UI principles. It does not have a build in, working ad blocker. The pop-up blocking is sub par. The security is abysmal and it can't even properly render Web pages written in WC3 standards set half a decade ago. It is ugly and unusable in my opinion.
IE will be the standard for a long time, and another reason to choose Windows over the 'competition'.
Nobody chooses Windows except OEMs that don't want to be run out of business. It comes pre-installed on every computer you buy (sans a few renegades that don't really affect the market). Some people choose the competition, but only after they have been forced to pay for MS's products first. I certainly hope it is not the standard for years to come, because that would imply that Web technologies will stagnate for another decade as MS refuses to implement any new standards and instead tries to covertly take over the Web using broken standards and proprietary extensions. I certainly don't look forward to another five years of coding pages to the standards, then working around all of IE's bugs and flaws.
I agree MS won't buy Opera to use the browser, but that is because they want a broken browser tied to the OS as tightly as possible, not because it is not superior. The banner ads you complain of are because they actually have to pay for developers with money not acquired via a monopoly. MS just rolls the cost into Windows, which you have to buy anyway, even if you plan to run Linux. Don't worry, if MS does acquire them there would be no banner ads and even if you run Linux you'll be paying for the developers. Gee, great, huh?
..is that he suffers from a mental illness, but for some reason has more to gain from being fired rather than retire of his own free will.
Extract of a chat with Jon held earlier this year:
Q: Hi I've been using opera from Opera 4 . And after four years I still have it - in fact I can't live without it! If Bill Gates wanted to buy Opera, do you accept it ?
Jon S. von Tetzchner: Hi Shima, thank you for using the best browser year after year! The answer to your question is simple: No. We would never sell Opera to Microsoft in a million years. Best regards, Jon.
Disclaimer: Yeah, I'm an Opera fanboi! What's it to ya?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
IE was woven into the codebase for Windows itself. I doubt Microsoft has the talent to untangle it, even with Vista.
Or maybe they wouldn't, and just leave the bloat there, with another userland application plonked down on top of it. Would be their style.
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.
You want to talk about 1994 UI land?
Number one: why are you typing "C:\" into a web browser's address bar? It's not a valid internet URL.
Number Two: "C:\" itself is 1982 UI, so you're really stretching the complaint.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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.
All the posts here are saying this would be a terrible idea but no one has mentioned why.
Yeah it would suck because MS would inevitably discontinue opera on all platforms besides windows, rename it, integrate it into the OS and make it uninstallable, and, then, MS would really have the best browser offering, and we'd all have nothing left to complain about.
But, that is why it would be such a good move. Fixing IE is gonna take alot of developer time and money, probably about as much as they'd pay to purchase Opera. Yeah, to fit into MS's strategy they'd have to completely hobble Opera and basically destroy all the good things about it.. But, they'd get a secure, fast, bloat free, feature rich browser that was coherently developed.
I think you're all opposed to the idea because it would be about the worst thing that could happen to OSS/Mozilla/Firefox. It would be a complete slap in the face, and it would destroy Firefox's momentum overnight. I'm against the idea too, cause I like opera, and it would be sad to see it destroyed by MS, but I don't think its a bad idea for MS. I think it would be about the most intelligent/strategic thing they could do right now.
One post mentioned "why spend money on something that you don't make money on" well they've been spending money every year for developers to build IE it doesn't seem to be a problem, another poster said "why spend money on something you already have" MS doesn't have an Opera-calibur browser, and making IE an opera-calibur browser is going to take alot of time and money.
I think MS is really pretty scared about the competition from google, from the web finally starting to matter in a real way. As MS loses market share in browsers, they lose hits to msn.com. honestly how many of you firefox users have your homepage set to msn.com? But IE comes with msn.com as the default homepage on every computer I've ever used. That loss of hits costs them money. They have no choice but to try to maintain 90%+ browser market share, if they were to drop to 50% market share, they'd really be hurting. I don't think anyone uses msn.com through an active choice... People choose to use Yahoo, Google, whatever, the only people who use msn.com are those who haven't changed their default home page. In short MS's only competitive advantage on the web is that they have a huge userbase that uses their browser... If they lose that, they lose everything else on the web, everyone will be at Google or Yahoo.
His entire argument is predicated upon the false premises that Microsoft wants to support open standards and that they want to support the Mac.
Microsoft has virtually bottomless resources - if they really wanted to, they could crank out a secure cross-platform web browser that supported relevant standards. What Microsoft has is exactly what they want - vendor lock-in with a mediocre product that through its various 'feature-driven' incompatibilities gives them some sense of control.
If Mircosoft can't own the roads, they want to own the potholes.
Opera should buy Microsoft
**waits for Slashdot to pick the bait and bring some traffic**
I viewed the article using Opera, and the text ran over the advertisement on right-hand-side.
-- All your bass are below two Hz
It's either an Apple, a Platypus, or a dogcow. Depending on the Mac.
Hell, I'd pay money to see Dvorak being beaten up by a platypus.
Shall I start with the bit about how Microsoft has no reason to develop Mac programs anymore becuse they can just use the Intel-based versions? He seems to have forgotten that fact that the platform is more than just a processer archtecture, there's the OS API as well. It takes a lot of glue code to get an x86 Windows app to run on x86 Linux (and even then it's rarely perfect), and the same would be true on x86 Mac.
.NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
Then he goes off on the whole "Opera identifies itself as IE so we don't know how many people use it" bull that's been debunked over and over and over again. Opera IDs itself as IE in the same way that IE identifies itself as Netscape -- and for the same reason. If you're paying any attention at all, you can tell the difference.
Some examples:
Netscape 4: "Mozilla/4.7 [en] (WinNT; U)"
IE 6: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;
Opera 7: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.50 [en]"
You'll note that IE spoofs Netscape, that Opera spoofs IE (including the Netscape spoof), and that all three are easily distinguishable if you're looking in the right place.
Does this guy have a clue what he's talking about?
>It works on all the major platforms including the Mac which IE won't support anymore
They say that as if Microsoft might want to support other platforms. IE works on Mac but they're tossing that out, so why would they buy another browser for that reason?
Nah, the only reason MS would buy Opera would be to lock it in a dumpster somewhere, never to be seen again.
400 mil is an awful lot of money to fix a browser... For a 1/10 of that price, you could fix the current IE... Plus, MS has to save face here... Buying opera is as much as saying "IE is worthless, buggy, crap... we had to buy opera because it was just too bad to be fixed"... Not exactly positive PR...
MS: "Dear Jon, we would like to hand you 400 million dollars, cash, for Opera"
Jon: "OK"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1. Different APIs - Lots of rewriting and adjusting to get it to work. 2. Huge time setback for future OS and browser release (like Vista). 3. IE is a good browser - Since XP SP2 much (naturally not all) of its security weaknesses have been dealth with, and its fast. And IE7 stands a good chance of being much more secure than IE6. 4. Antitrust lawsuits - Opera is someone MS can point at and say "See! We have competition! So don't sue us!"
What Microsoft should do is *outsource* to the Opera crew, i.e. no Microsoft developers would be allowed to touch the code, and Microsoft managers wouldn't be able to manage the project.
http://outcampaign.org/
I rather suspect Jon is filthy rich a few times over, regardless. I've met him and he is a very solid sort of guy, well-grounded. I expect he knows fully that his life won't get any better with an gross excess of wealth, and I rather doubt he measures his achievements in dollars. Money is great and all, but it's gotta be kept in perspective to all else that's important in life.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=2108
Please please please tell me this is wrong.