Opera Founder Jon S. von Tetzchner Resigns

fysdt writes with this excerpt from TechCrunch: "Opera founder Jon S. von Tetzchner has resigned from the company. In an email to Opera employees, von Tetzchner said that 'It has become clear that The Board, Management and I do not share the same values and we do not have the same opinions on how to keep evolving Opera. As a result I have come to an agreement with the Board to end my time at Opera. I feel the Board and Management is more quarterly focused than me.'"

Comments

So, will he continue to use Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

If not, that'll cut their usage share by half.

Ouch

[Hatta]

Opera has been a damn good browser, and the focus of the company Opera has always been producing a damn good browser. If the focus becomes quarterly profit, I don't see much of a future for the Opera browser.

Re:Sad news

[Nerdfest]

After the remaining board members "monetize" it, (my guess as to their intentions), I think your estimate will be quite accurate.

No surprises here

[dkleinsc]

Business guys want short-term profit at all costs. Technical guys want long-term technical excellence which is better in the long run but not as profitable in the short run. Because the business guys have the dough, they win in a for-profit business.

That (in a nutshell) is why for-profit business cannot be the driver of excellence in software.

Re:Quarterly Focused?

[firellama]

Quarterly Focused means that they are looking to hit their quarterly financial targets rather than the strategic long-term objectives. Companies that do this tend to be loved by analysts, but encounter difficulties when competition leaps ahead (usually by investing in R&D or technological breakthroughs).

Hard to compete with free..

[SuperCharlie]

I think the board will find that monetizing a great product in an environment of free mediocre and/or good equivalent products is still a failing business model.

Fork'd

[cratermoon]

Why doesn't von Tetzchner just fork the source and create a new project? Oh right, Opera is closed source. Pity.

Opera is going the wrong way

[Tridus]

I met Jon years ago, and found him to be a great guy. The company at the time was focused on making a good browser for power users, and they did that really well. It also helped that back then they were focused on performance and working on older systems.

At some point I noticed things changing years later. Opera got bigger, and slower. UI stuff that worked forever was broken in favor of a less flexible Firefox clone model. Attention was diverted to writing an email client. Then a BitTorrent client. Then a web server built into the browser. I only wish I was making that last one up.

The company lost focus on what made Opera good in the first place as they went from trying to be a good, fast browser to trying to do everything for everybody. Finally I stopped using it when the drift got so bad that it wasn't really better then Firefox at anything.

This drift coincided with the company growing in size and it being less about how it started: Jon and a few other guys trying to make a good browser.

Re:Opera is going the wrong way

[afidel]

IMHO they make the best mobile browser out there, and since almost all the carriers are now going with draconian data plans it makes tons of sense to use their compression and resizing model. I was never a fan of their desktop browser, but I'm glad they were there as most of the other players stole some of their best ideas and incorporated them into browsers that fit my style better.

Re:Opera is going the wrong way

[hkmwbz]

The company at the time was focused on making a good browser for power users

Actually, it was never just a browser. Even the first public version did mail, newsgroups, and more. Furthermore, site compatibility was a huge problem in the early days, and until recently. Opera now works with more sites than ever.

It also helped that back then they were focused on performance and working on older systems.

Good thing Opera is currently one of the fastest browsers, and still runs on slow hardware, them.

Opera got bigger, and slower.

On the contrary. Opera is now faster than ever. It got bigger because it now handles a lot more open web standards and technologies than it used to. You'll notice that most of the growth comes from adding support for new web standards, and adding workarounds for broken sites.

UI stuff that worked forever was broken in favor of a less flexible Firefox clone model.

Such as?

Attention was diverted to writing an email client. Then a BitTorrent client. Then a web server built into the browser. I only wish I was making that last one up.

What are you talking about? The BitTorrent hasn't received a single update in several years. Mail was there from the very first public version, but was also left nearly untouched until quite recently, when they made a new mail panel for 11.0 or something like that.

It is clear that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Unite might be a web server, but what it enables is direct communication between devices. Opera is not just a desktop browser, but actually a cross-platform browser.

The company lost focus on what made Opera good in the first place as they went from trying to be a good, fast browser to trying to do everything for everybody.

Once again you are getting it completely wrong. Opera has always been doing more than just browser.

This drift coincided with the company growing in size and it being less about how it started: Jon and a few other guys trying to make a good browser.

You must be drunk or something. Jon himself wanted Opera to be everything for everyone. He was constantly going on about how great that was in various interviews.

Clearly, you are completely clueless about Opera's history.

Short term vs long term.

[bmo]

"the Board and Management is more quarterly focused than me."

That's it. Stick a fork in it. Opera is done.

It will go up for sale within the year, get bought out, and disappear. Because the board needs its golden parachutes.

--
BMO