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.

Comments

Monopolistic?

[Trip Ericson]

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.

Re:Monopolistic?

[FatRatBastard]

Cellphones. Opera is huge competition for Microsoft in the cellphone arena. Considering this is where almost all of the growth is going to happen with respect to connectivity it is hugely important. This is the main reason why I don't see MS buying Opera: I don't think anyone is going to sign off on handing basically the entire phone browser market over to one company, especially if that company has the anti-trust history that MS has.

I nominate this for Slashdot Story of the Year

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft to buy Opera... maybe... not yet, but it could happen someday.

FASCINATING.

Re:I nominate this for Slashdot Story of the Year

[AndroidCat]

I thought the story was that Opera had purchased some company called Rumour Control.

Mobile market

[uncl_bob]

As progster on osnews speculated: "Microsoft wants it for the mobile market and they'll kill the pc version of opera."

The PR gal is a hottie

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'll too have to call her about this rumour.

Re:The PR gal is a hottie

[Wordsmith]

Yeah, but she -is- hot.

OPERA IS NOT WRITTEN IN QT

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is NOT a Qt app. The Unix version uses Qt for certain dialogs and such, but that's it. Windows and Mac Opera do not use Qt at all. They use a special GUI toolkit which they developed internally.

So ?

[alexhs]

Slashdot. Counternews for nerds, Stuff that might matter one day... or not.

Dumbest. Idea. Ever.

[ip_freely_2000]

If MS needs a new browser, which they don't, it would be FAR more strategic to use Firefox, a la Netscape. Even though they would not own the browser, and they would be returning some features back to the public, they could use new Firefox features to drive sales of their server based products.

There is no money in browsers (just ask Opera), but lots to be made in selling server software.

Re:Dumbest. Idea. Ever.

[spif]

As far as MS is concerned, IE is not about web browsing. The web browser view of IE is just the sugar coating to get regular consumers to use it. IE's primary purpose is to be a client interface to applications written in ActiveX, VBscript, etc. That's why it is so popular in businesses, even those who use custom Windows desktop builds and/or software distribution and could easily put Firefox on every PC in their organization.

If it was about which web browser is the best, Firefox would easily dominate the market, especially in corporations where security is important. But MS has locked people into IE by convincing them to use their proprietary platform for web applications. If Opera (or any other browser) could access all of those applications (by default - I know there are plugins and such for this) then they might be able to replace IE, since like I said the web browsing portion is secondary to MS. But they've put a lot of work into 'optimizing' IE to be a client for those apps, so I don't see them throwing that away. Besides which, any security advantage in using the rendering engine and UI from Opera would be wiped out by adding in ActiveX and VBscript support.

Dvorak doesn't understand this aspect of IE, it seems, which is the only reason I can think of for his suggestion that Opera could replace IE. It's not about the web browsing, it's about the application platform. IE is an integral part of the MS proprietary web platform and that's not likely to change so easily.

They cross-check the articles now?

[rainer_d]

Christ! What's next? No more dupes? No more early "FreeBSD x has been released"?
An early New Years Resolution?
I'm speechless.

Microsoft to buy the Internet from Al Gore

[wasserja]

I just read from www.icantbelieveitsnottrue.com that Microsoft has inked a deal with Al Gore to purchase the rights to the Internet.

Bass (was: tenor)

[olovjohansson]

{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

Re:i heard

[S.O.B.]

men would live on the moon by 1999

Don't do it. They'll be forced to wear polyester suits with bell bottoms. Then there'll be a horrible accident and the moon will get blown out of Earth's orbit and send the moon and it's inhabitants on an interstellar journey encountering alien races and strange powerful forces. Wait...it's 2005 and that hasn't happened. Damn you Gerry and Sylvia Anderson! Damn you all to hell!!!

Extra, extra, read all about it!

[Odin's Raven]

Deranged drivel from pointless pundit once again shown to have no basis in reality.

Next /. story: Dvorak unable to find posterior with both hands, proclaims demise of buttocks as we know them.

Next /. retraction: Arse in previous Dvorak stories positively identified, proven to exist. (Which, of course, is not to say that the disappearance of arses won't happen ... just that it hasn't happened yet.)