Opera Browser Creators Planning IPO 368
Iphtashu Fitz writes "Norwegian web browser developer Opera Software is reportedly planning an Initial Public Offering on the Oslo Stock Exchange next month. According to a press release issued today, Opera's revenue for the last quarter grew 108.7% and CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner stated that 'After developing and refining the technology and commercial side for nine years, Opera Software is now ready for public listing.' Opera has, according to CNET News, gained popularity in the past few months thanks, in part, to having ported their well-known browser to smartphones."
Crashes... (Score:4, Informative)
4.2 Million USD (Score:5, Informative)
For the currency impaired, that's the revenue for this year. Last year was 2.0 million USD
On a similar note, 108% revenue growth isn't that impressive when you're talking about this small of an amount. Now if IBM showed 108% revenue growth, then there'd be something to talk about.
Sorry, but color me unimpressed.
Re:I wonder which (Score:4, Informative)
Bad timing (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Can someone explain... (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine you are in your kitchen baking cookies, and you sense that your cookie-baking will make you rich someday. You just need some money for advertising and a bigger kitchen. How can you do it? You can try and grow slowly, but you might never succeed. You can take out a loan, but what if you can't pay it back? You're screwed. So you can try and convince people that your business is growing, big time, and you will offer to sell pieces of the business for a high price (higher than the value of all your equipment at least). You take this big mass of cash, grow your business, and everybody gets rich as your income grows and the value of your stock goes up accordingly. And your company is in neat little pieces that can be bought and sold as needed. Instead of just you owning your business, all these people own little pieces of it.
And if the business flops, you don't owe these buyers anything, because they assumed the risk when they buy.
Pretty simple really...there's also seconday benefits like exposure and PR but the basic point is to raise capital.
Re:Crashes... (Score:5, Informative)
Opera is appealing because it's not just a viable replacement for IE or Mozilla, but it's actually an alternative. It's code base is unique in that it has no common ties to the gecko browsers. It's fast. Really fast.
Mouse gestures in Mozilla and IE are (literally) an after thought add-on. Due to Mozilla's design, I'm not sure that a mouse gesture can even register while a page is loading. Little things that destroy the UI if they aren't done right.
How is this relevant? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sounds interesting. (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.thestreet.com/pf/markets/asktheexper
I guess you can buy direct into foreign markets, or you can buy ADR's, which are some sort of vouchers.
No crashes here. Never! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I have the tried the mouse gestures in mozilla. They are not at all consistent. You have to "draw" the gesture exactly with sharp edges or it failes to recongnize. With Opera it is very robust. And yes, mouse gestures is important to me.
This one might be my ignorance, but I can't get the tabbed browsing to work right on Mozilla. Most of the time it opens new tab for new window but sometimes it will open a new window. Not to mention that the download window always opens a new window. Opera always keeps everything in the same window.
And finally, I love that I can close opera and start it later and have all my open webpages restored. No need to temporary bookmarks. Couldn't find this mozilla.
So until mozilla gets these right (specially mouse gestures), I will stick to opera. Although one thing I miss that mozilla has is the google toolbar. Hopefully, opera will pick it up soon.
Re:Crashes... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Can someone explain... (Score:4, Informative)
Besides, a lot of times the company is not really owned by the person who came up with the original product, but by that person's investors. And the reason investors invest is that they think it will make them money.
Re:Crashes... (Score:3, Informative)
Opera's crashes are very much version dependent. Some are much worse than others.
Personally, I could never get used to the way that Mozilla did ANYTHING. Without Multizilla, I was forever opening new Windows instead of new Tabs. For my browsing needs, I never want to open a new window except under very specific instances. I found Mozilla opening up new windows all the time.
Also, Mozilla's tabs are exactly one size, regardless of the size of the original window. Opera's tabs are little windows, maintained within a big window. Sure, I normally have them maximized anyway, but it comes in handy now and then to have them resizeable.
I dunno. Both browsers, from an overall view work similarily, and both do a good job. For me, it was the little details that made Opera more appealing. It's hard to explain all the little things that I like about it, but at this point, I'm too familiar with it to change, unless something monumentally better comes along.
Here's Why... (Score:5, Informative)
Because by "going public" their corporate offices sole responsibility becomes maximizing dividends for the stockholders. I don't agree with this formula, but it's as simple as that.
Re:I Was Getting Afraid (Score:3, Informative)
They haven't released a new version in a long time
They are busy working on 7.50, which has some failry major changes to the layout of the GUI. A preview version was made available a few weeks ago (search the opera.beta and opera.linux newsgroup archives for a link). The new version includes an RSS reader, a spell-checker, a cookie editor, an IRC client, the much-requested ability to apply their small screen rendering to hotlist panels to make just about any web-page a side-bar panel and lots of fixes and enhancements. The preview is alpha quality but it looks interesting, I expect a beta must be near.
Answers (Score:3, Informative)
The only thing that I don't like is, as you mentioned, the inability to gesture on a blank page. You can gesture while one is loading, but not if you're still connecting. Kind of annoying, but oh well. Head over to the Mozillazine [mozillazine.org] forums if you need help with tabs, those guys can know everything
Oh, and about the download thing; in this latest release (Firefox 0.8), all downloads are loaded in to a single window/box. No more screwwing around with 90 download windows at once anymore. You can do that with a (very popular) extension called Tabbrowser Extensions (sometimes known as TBE). Under Tools -> Options -> Extensions -> Tabbrowser Extensions -> Startup. Theres a section for restoring sessions (and a sub option for tabs) on restart. Oh, and theres also one for restoring your session after a crash - that one is VERY handy.
I know you're not likely to switch browsers, but just wanted to post some answers for anyone else with the same questions. Happy browsing!
Re:I wonder which (Score:2, Informative)
Frankly, I'll keep my money in safer places....
Oh, you betcha. But it's not as off-the-wall as it seems at first glance.
Re:Opera (Score:5, Informative)
Well. Let's see. [opera.com]. Opera is the standard browser on:
in addition to being available as perhaps the only real browser for Nokia 3650/7650, Nokia N-Gage and Siemens SX1, and Opera also has partnerships with several companies [opera.com]
Re:Can someone explain... (Score:3, Informative)
According to this page on the Opera site [opera.com], the product was, in fact, self-financed until 1999, when the company borrowed $15 million, perhaps to finance the phone browser, perhaps to compete more aggressively on the desktop. The company says the money was borrowed from "financial investors," which could mean a bank, venture fund, private "angel" investors, relatives or personal credit cards.
All of these investors have one thing in common: they expect to be paid back, plus a premium for putting their money at risk. Imagine being tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and then imagine there is a way to pay off all of those debts and also avoid going to bankers for new capital for a long time, possibly forever. This is the appeal of an IPO.
Also, even if there is no debt to pay off, issuing shares has the distinct advantage over any other kind of debt in that it does not have to be paid back. If you blow the money, you may get booted personally as CEO but your company will not be foreclosed upon and sold or liquidated
Smart Cell Phones (Score:3, Informative)
Whether Opera is popular on PCs is entirely beside the point. Opera's public mind share may be in PCs, but it's market share is in embedded devices and that is what is driving their performance. It's also what makes it a good IPO candidate.
Re:IPO means i gotta find a new web-browser.. (Score:3, Informative)
Here's an idea... (Score:5, Informative)
Also whenever I use Yahoo! mail with Opera and I am entering my password, the prompt JUMPS to the user name box and the characters that I type appear appended to my user name. Again this doesn't happen in Internet Explorer.
I sure wish they could fix this nonsense.
Have you even TRIED changing your browser's identification string? It's a couple of clicks away in the Quick Preferences menu...
Also, I should note to everyone that the latest beta of Opera has a redesigned interface that removes clutter. Let's be honest--Opera is the fastest and lightest browser, and almost all of its innovative features were copied by the freeware browsers. Not that I'm not typing this in the new Firefox right now! But once the new Opera comes out, I may switch back again. Heck, changing skins happens instantly in less than a second with no restart.
Re:I won't be buying any stock... (Score:5, Informative)
It's got a really nice interface. Not only is it intuitive, but quite powerful too. Here are a few things I do with it: (note: I do not intend to imply that these are things Mozilla cannot do. I'm simply stating what I use it for.)
- I post my artwork on a lot of different forums. For each project, I create a folder. In that folder there's a bookmark linking to every single thread I've started about that project. When I right-click on that folder, I can say "open each one in a new window." That's exactly what it does. When the windows are done loading, the titlebar of each page turns the text blue.
- The magnify button scales up text and images, nice for zooming in on artwork I browse. (Porn too!)
- The transfers window is nice for downloading files. Not only does it stay out of the way, but it also allows you to re-xfer and resume files without having to go hunt down a link.
- Opera's email client is
Okay, I babbled a lot on this topic, but I seriously love Opera for forum browsing because of how its email works.
- Opera's customization is surprisingly robust. Add buttons.. remove buttons... reorder them. I am continually suprised by Opera's intuitiveness in this regard. They've really through what somebody might want to do when they click, drag, or right click.
- Refresh every n minutes. That feature's cool if you're waiting for a website to update.
- Linked Windows: Click a link in one window, the response happens in another. This is a GREAT porn surfing feature! (I ain't gonna lie to you guys, porn surfing is important to me!)
- You can transplant it to another machine. This is undocumented, but I've been able to move Opera with all my bookmarks, email, etc to another machine. It took some editing of
- You can turn off images with the click of an icon. I found this useful while travelling once. The dialup connection was HORRID. So I turned off image downloading and boom the internet was much more responsive. (IT's also good for avoiding Goatse links.
Opera's popularity is understandable. Mozilla may have a lot of what I mentioned. At that point, it becomes a matter of personal preference.
Re:Tiny-screen browsing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I wonder which (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How is this relevant? (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't get to mod it, but I'll explain. You see, the point is that all Swedes are incredibly stupid. In fact, they have the brain capacities of 3 year olds (apart from the really bright ones, like the ones you see in pornographic movies, who sometimes reach the mental stadium of adolescence). If you've ever observed small children playing, you would have noticed that they make a sound somewhat like a car when they play with cars. Swedes are like that when driving their "real" cars (not that Saab or Volvo are real cars), but since they're constantly drooling, they spit on the windshield when they drive. Swedes just happen to be a bunch of in-bred pigfuckers (pig-fucking is in-breeding for Swedes -- there's a reason why they're pink skinned).
Basically, the joke is funny because it's true. Now someone mod me +5, informative. I deserve it.
(Well, actually: The reasons why Norwegians joke about Swedes are mainly historical. Norway was in a union with Sweden 1814-1905 because Sweden looted us from Denmark after Napoleon's wars failed (Denmark was forced to choose the wrong side). Also, Germany didn't bother occupying Sweden in 1940, and Sweden profited quite well from poor Norwegians after WWII. It's old hatred and rivalry, and it goes back to long before 1814.(Oh, and my apologies to the Americans who think the Swedes are offended. Believe me, they're not. They actually do have a sense of humour. Why else would they speak so funny?))
Re:If Opera ever had a fatal flaw.... (Score:3, Informative)
That's because you don't understand how computer programs work. You don't just load them into memory, and boom! Everything works.
Programs dynamically allocate memory to be used for their internal workings. This is what is commonly referred to as a "heap". It's basically a big "heap" of memory that a program can, at its whim (and within boundaries set by the OS
Think about what your average complex program does. It's not just math. It needs to store a LOT of data. Things the user enters, and things that result from calculations from that data. Different representations of that data, you name it. The worst part is when you're pulling data from another computer. You suddenly need to store all of THAT data within your own RAM. Kinda like webpages. Opera caches everything insanely well (I can go back in my browser through dozens of links, and the pages will render almost instantaneously). All of this is stored within RAM. The longer you use Opera, the more RAM it will use, and this is a big reason why.
Anyway, if you're writing "hello world", you're correct. Your program will pretty much use only the memory needed to load the executable (and a bit for stack space, plus OS-related information). But anything reasonably complex, with complicated data structuring, and pulling data from other sources... THAT will use a LOT of memory. That's just how computers work.