Ask Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner

Opera Software has gotten all kinds of media play lately, including rumors that both Google and Microsoft were buying the company. Whether you love or hate Opera, you've got to give them credit for building a decent browser and grabbing a small but noticeable market share in the face of competition from both MSIE and Firefox. Co-founder/CEO Jon von Tetzchner is obviously reponsible for at least some of this success -- and for much of the company's high press profile, due not only to the Opera Browser itself but to at least one whacky PR stunt and at least one high-profile beef with Microsoft. So who is this guy? Ask and find out. He's obviously not your typical software company CEO, so we don't expect typical CEO-type answers from him. We'll send him (direct, not through a PR person) 10 or 12 of your best questions Friday afternoon (US EST), and run his answers during the first week of 2006.

Comments

Re:Competing vs Free Open Source Product

[publius_jr]

While Firefox certainly does compete strongly with Opera, its popularity is not only a negative for Opera. For one, Opera is itself a high-quality product, in some ways better than the godlike Firefox. Firefox sometimes places a heavy footprint on my computer's memory; Opera's code seems more streamlined. The Opera interface has some interesting plusses, as well. Healithy competition will ensure more useful features in Opera. Also, the popularity of ANY alternative to IE is a boon for ALL alternatives, for without such Microsoft could de-commodotize the market, killing off all competition.

Firefox provides only competition for Opera. Not only does it compete itself, however, but it also allows for any competition in the first place.

Re:Why should I pay for a web browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to pay for opera. It's free and without the banner

But they couldn't!

[billybob]

many websites would block Opera outright

Ah, but you see, that is nearly impossible! Why? Because! Opera had the brilliant idea that by default, it would identify itself as Internet Explorer, so that sites trying to lock out non-IE browsers would be fooled. I can understand the reasoning here, but as a web developer, it is actually really frustrating. Opera can do most everything IE can, as far as I can tell, but some of its CSS is a bit wacky. Not as wacky as IE, but certainly wacky in other ways. But because of the faked User Agent by default, I can't detect Opera and include changes to CSS to make it behave properly.

But, anyways, from the comments already, it seems built-in AdBlock is in high demand. I'd have to agree with this sentiment. If I had to choose only one extension that I couldn't live without, it would be AdBlock. Whenever I use a computer without it, I am appalled by how annoying the internet trully is.

Re:Ebrary: why we don't use Opera in the library

[citizenr]

>Active-X plugin thingies
>higher ups have payed thousands of dollars
>designed to work with IE

that doesnt need any comments, does it? :/

Re:Competing vs Free Open Source Product

[sp00nz]

It's not an impossible fight when you realize Opera is just better than Firefox.

competition from KHTML/WebCore

[Illissius]

One of Opera's many strengths is it's excellent rendering engine, Presto, which is light, fast, and standards compliant. To this point, is has held an edge over the competition -- over just about everything in terms of speed, over IE in standards compliance, and over Gecko in a clean and agile codebase (admittedly I haven't seen either, but judging from results and what I've heard).

However, it now has some significant competition from KHTML/WebCore, which enjoys both corporate backing from Apple (and to a lesser degree Nokia), and the support of the open source community. It too has a clean and flexible codebase (this was the reason Apple chose it for Safari instead of Gecko, in the first place), it has a degree of standards compliance comparable to Opera's, and with Safari 2, it's also the only browser to seriously challenge Opera in terms of speed. There has also been movement (by Nokia) to adapt it to the mobile market, which is, if memory serves, Opera's main source of income currently.

What do you think of KHTML/WebCore? Do you see it as a threat to Opera's position in the desktop and/or mobile markets? If so, how do you plan to stay ahead of it?