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Opera Purchase Rumour Control
We've had several submissions this morning concerning a CoolTechZone article stating that Microsoft has purchased Opera, seemingly confirming the Dvorak article we reported on yesterday. However, roblimo has followed up with Opera and found that to be (so far), less than true. Opera PR person Berit Hanson told Slashdot by phone from Oslo, Norway, that "last week it was Google, this week it's Microsoft." She laughed and added, "If I was working for Microsoft I think I'd know it, but I'm still in Oslo, not Washington, still working for Opera." Which, of course, is not to say it won't happen ... it just hasn't happened yet.
I wonder if government regulators would allow Microsoft to buy Opera at all. Wouldn't they see a problem with the company that controls 80%+ of a market buying out one of the few surviving competitors they have? There's Firefox, AOL... uh... Netscape doesn't count since it's a blend of Firefox and IE...
I mean, I don't know, I just can't see it being allowed.
The way the IE team has been killing themselves lately developing IE7, I'd be pretty surprised if MS turned around and bought Opera. It would also seem like an odd time to make the buy, given that IE7 ships next year.
Isn't it obvious that this is just a result of someone confusing Dvorak's "they should buy Opera" into "they have bought Opera"? And it really is inconceivable that they would buy Opera. NFW.
It very well could never happen. I have seen no evidence even suggesting that MS even wants Opera, other than a very speculative and not very well thought out article written by some troll. This is yellow journalism at its best, when someone comes out and refutes an entirely made up story, claim "it still could happen".
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
For linking to ANY article written by that idiot Dvorak. If Slashdot picks it up, his article gets steam and then other sites will make assumptions and false alerts based on shoddy reporting and opinions by the one and only, Dvorak.
God this really boggles the mind...
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
{i blogged this and shamelessly copy-and-pasted it from http://fancy.se/ with lost links and formatting, but anyways}
There's a rumour that Microsoft has bought Opera software, makers of the (closed source) fast, cross-platform and lightweight Opera web browser, Opera mobile (Symbian S60, Windows mobile) and the recently released Opera mini (for Java phones).
It's not hard to understand why Microsoft would be interested. Opera is very standards compliant, more so than IE6 (and IE7 perhaps). Opera is obviously very well engineered, with a very fast renderer and extremely low memory footprint. Most importantly, Opera runs on platforms that Microsoft wants to reach out to and (in the end) dominate or conquer.
Such platforms are Symbian OS (in different series), a common OS for mobile phones. Opera rules that territory today.
Such platforms are Maemo (you've heard about Nokia 770, haven't you?), the exciting new open platform that Nokia puts work into, based on the Linux-kernel, X11 and GTK+, to name some open source technologies. Opera rules that territory today.
Such platforms are desktop Linux (Fedora Core, Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE, Mandriva, Slackware, RHEL, CentOS, the list goes on..) with KDE (QT) and/or Gnome (GTK+) integration. Linux users today mainly use Firefox or Konqueror, desktop Linux are getting more and more momentum and Microsoft understands that. Microsoft wants to reach that platform, for the same reasons that they want to reach Mac OS X (although most OS X users runs Safari or Firefox), and compared to porting IE to Linux from scratch (which could be a huge project depending on their codebase) lots of time could be saved by going with Opera (which has a Linux QT-version today). I expect Microsoft to port Windows Media Player to Linux soon too, for the same reasons that they have it for OS X, but that's a different story.
Such platforms are Mac OS X, since the old Internet Explorer for Mac will receive no more updates after new-year and will cease to exist as a download a month after that. Apple releasing Safari (the Konqueror technology KHTML-based browser) for OS X was Microsofts worst nightmare, they lost their dominance (yes, most OS X users ran IE before that) in an increadibly short time. At first it looked liked they wouldn't do anything about it and keep a kind of wait-and-see attitude (halting all serious work on IE for Mac). They need to hold on to OS X, either Microsoft ports IE7 to Mac OS X (which they could as they've done it before, but i suspect it's a whole lot of work) or they try a short-cut - Opera.
Such platforms are Windows mobile, their own platform for handhelds and phones. Many users seem to prefer Opera before IE for this platform, with Microsoft buying Opera their dominance would be total (neither Firefox nor a KHTML-based browser are available for this platform).
And actually, such platforms are Windows XP and Vista. Microsoft wants to grab users from Opera and Firefox.
If this rumour is true and Microsoft will buy Opera, I expect Microsoft to merge the "full" Opera web browser with Internet Explorer, and release it as IE8. This won't happen until summer 2007 at earliest, and likely even later (due to their track record). IE7 will release as planned (first half 2006 or something) and not contain a single line of Opera-code (it's in beta already). I expect IE8 to be more like IE7 with some Opera-technology merged in rather than the opposite. This could be a huge project and Microsoft could choose to skip most of it. They will look into Opera's renderer though, and they will look into the cross-platform nature of Opera.
The bottom line is, buying Opera is a cheap (relatively speaking, you've seen all the TV-commercials for Xbox 360 haven't you?) ticket into other competitors territory for Microsoft. Grabbing existing Symbian userbase would probably be worth it alone.
They might also just as well buy it and discontinue the whole thing, trying to help sales for Windows Mobile as a
""If I was working for Microsoft I think I'd know it, but I'm still in Oslo, not Washington, still working for Opera.""
Which actually has a meaning of.... NOTHING.
It is not a confirmation, nor a denial - she has skipped around the question by making a joke. The reporter should ask her outright again to answer the question, or not quote at all.
The quote means nothing - she could be telling the truth, *and* know that Microsoft has taken over Opera *and* the quote would still be correct. (If MS took a majority stake in Opera, Operas employees wouldn't work for MS, they would work for Opera... *and* you can bet most jobs wouldn't be moving to Washington anyway).
Yeah, but she -is- hot.
Yes, people are bashing the "not yet" part of the article, but the cross-checking is something to be commended and encouraged! Kudos to Roblimo.
The filesystem is the package manager
Come on. They've put how much time and money into developing IE7? No way they would do all that then scrap it for Opera. Not to say that Opera isn't better (I don't know). But it would be an incredible waste. If they were going to do such a thing, they would have bought Opera before they started developing IE7.
blah blah blah! always the nagging about slashdot (oh yeah right i should grow a sense of humour, right?)
/. this time.
so far (shockingly!) slashdot at least verified whether this was a rumour or not. this is a proper newsreport, unlike the simple copy paste at digg.com for example. kudo's to