Google to Buy Opera?

patro writes "Opera Watch writes Google is planning to buy the Opera browser. The source of the claim is Pierre Chappaz, the former president of Yahoo Europe. Google obviously can't buy Firefox, so Opera might be the next possible candidate." I can't begin to imagine why.

This is stupid.

[Spazntwich]

Absurd rumor mongering at its best/worst. If Google really wanted to get into the browser arena, why wouldn't they just create their own based on the open (And most importantly, FREE) Gecko engine?

Data Mining

[Anti_Climax]

So now they'll be able to track where we're going when it's not mentioned in our gmail or searched for through their search engine.

Could be interesting.

A premonition?

[Bananatree3]

It has been known for some time that google registered gbroswer.com [whois.sc]. Could this simply be the beginning of the Google Browser?

Reasons to buy Opera?

[shanen]

It's a pretty good browser, they have a development team in place but in a sellable form, and it has some especial strengths for the high-growth pervasive market. More importantly, it actually has the potential to be a tactical threat to Microsoft, but as a relatively external unit, it could also be sold off if the tactic doesn't work.

Good because...

[Iscariot_]

Firefox 1.5 has really let me down. It's memory footprint is only slightly larger but what really irks me is that it is a processor hog. Not only that but there was a huge list of bugs they didn't knock out before launching 1.5, I'm not really sure why they chose to do this. (Before you say, "but there's always bugs", there were some serious UI bugs that should have been dealt with.) I'm back to running 1.0.7 until Firefox 1.5 can a nice point release but Opera is looking more and more tempting.

I'm scared that Firefox 2.0 will have twice the system requirments than the operating systems on which it runs which, imho, it shouldn't. :(

Makes sense to me.

[Eightyford]

This makes perfect sense to me. I think with all of the web services that google develops, they don't want to be inhibited by bugs in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. [slashdot.org] They could also get people to switch to Opera pretty easily, as most people already use the search engine, and all it would take is a small "download this to enable extra features" button.

I'm surprised they haven't done this already.

You're kidding, right?

[rewt66]

I can't begin to imagine why.

You can't? I can...

Microsoft has announced an intention to kill Google. (All right, Ballmer said so to a guy who was leaving to go to Google. Same difference.) Microsoft has made some announcements of stuff to compete with Google. Microsoft also controls the most-used browser.

Add it all up, and I can sure see why Google might want to have a (better, but less popular) browser under their control...

I can think of several reasons

[danmart]

Reasons to buy Opera:
1. Opera is a fast browser with clean code. Fits with google quality requirements/desires.
2. Opera is closed source. Google can add secret sauce for tracking or search or ad related reasons.
3. Opera can be made into a product to compete with MS without giving away the source to competitors.

Re:This is stupid.

[KimmoKM]

Why Gecko? KHTML is free (LGPL) too and at least I find it faster and it supports standards better.

Re:This is slightly confusing.

[Synic]

Yahoo Europe's word, not Google's. Yeaaahh their competitor is VERY reliable. :P

Mobile business?

[Jugalator]

I can't begin to imagine why.

I don't think Google will buy Opera just yet at least, especially considering Opera's denial in connection to this, but Opera has a much greater foothold than any Mozilla product in the mobile market, and it has earlier been rumored that Google is considering moving into the mobile business more. (actually, they already have with their free WiFi service, their online mobile-targeting services, etc)

No Thanks

[the computer guy nex]

Google makes money from information that makes their Search Engine better. That is their business model, and everything they do will feed into this. Free Gmail (but all links scanned to populate search engine), Free Internet (but all patterns tracked), etc.

No way am I using a browser and letting Google know THAT much about me, especially if they require you to have a Google account to use.

Re:Is Opera Google's doorway to beating Microsoft?

[dada21]

I think Google has some interesting "backdoor" powers when it comes to tackling the Office "menace."

First, if they can incorporate Open Office or even their own Office-style applet and combine it with the ability to search the web for information in real time, they could offer researchers, writers, students and even businesses the ability to grab information about the topic they're writing on instantly. Start writing a paper on cattle mutilations and GoogleWriter could offer you instant access to facts, opinions, Wikis, blogs and more on the topic.

GoogleNumbers could offer insight into the spreadsheet you're forming, offering equations and possibly enhancements.

GooglePresentations could incorporate Google Images or some search routines to bring in key phrases, pictures, graphs, who knows what information.

I'm not saying Opera is the end-game for Google, but it opens the door to incorporating more desktop oriented software the user is familiar with while attaching Google's top-notch aggregated data feeds for the user to tap.

This is strange -- they already give $ to Mozilla

[ZipR]

Ben Goodger is being paid by google to work on Firefox... http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/007366 .html [mozillazine.org]

And is supporting them in other ways: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39189475,00.htm [zdnet.co.uk]

Perhaps they wish to buy (and then bury) the Opera browser?

Re:This is stupid. Maybe not

[TheRaven64]

Have you looked at WebCore recently? Since Apple opened development Nokia has been one of the primary external contributors. There are beta versions of WebCore browsers for Series 60 'phones and the '770 floating around, and they stack up quite well against Opera - I wouldn't be surprised if Nokia decided to ditch Opera in favour of their own browser sometime soon. Of course, if Google bought Opera and gave away the mobile version for free, then this might be more attractive...

Re:Is Opera Google's doorway to beating Microsoft?

[beforewisdom]

Very fascinating suppositions and it jives with the question "why not firefox?".

According to your theory Google wants a standard platform with which to build up their apps. Firefox, being controlled by other people will be a moving target to a certain exent, which would slow them down.

If they buy Opera and beef up their web apps to Opera as a platform Opera is standards compliant so Firefox can easily adjust. The Firefox crew does the work of adjusting to Google instead of Google adjusting to Firefox.

Possible Reasons for buying Opera

[MarkCarson]

Oh the possibilites:

• Opera becomes a free, as in no-cost, browser (forget about buying your way out of displaying Google ads) which means you can't pay for it but you also can't disabled advertising.
• Google aquires a browser that runs on platforms not supported by IE and Firefox, accellerating distro of Google products/services to small/alternate form factor devices.
• They open source Opera so features in it (don't ask me what) can find their way into Firefox.
• Google once again uses its wealth to fund threatened developers, in this case former Opera employees.
• Google uses the closed source Opera code base to make a platform which can run emerging Google specific apps which are not supported via current browsers. Think Google Earth where the "app" is GOpera which understands how to connect to the Google Keyhole servers to download "application code" as well as map data. Integrated Chat, FTP, Mail, etc. where all of the "extras" are downloaded on demand. Imagine a "browser" which has a full text editing/ word processing engine (like say maybe Star Office) built-in but saves its documents transparently to Google Base servers. The Google/Opera application could be their end-all intregration suite. The Opera engine (HTTP transport, rendering, etc.) supplies a common client-side platform for their developments to come. And you thought MS-Office was scary as "the" application intregration platform for Micro$oft!!!

Re:Lets hope they open source it

[Seumas]

The last time I saw a screenshot of Opera, it looked an awful lot like the current version of AOL stuff that people keep installing on my random home boxes when they visit (because AOL people are apparently willing to spend $30/mo even though you ALREADY HAVE internet access for them, just so they can chat with their moron friends in AOL chatrooms...)

Anyway - what's cheaper? Modifying Mozilla to whatever end pleases them? Or spending tens or hundreds of millions to buy out a company that has a browser and doing whatever to that?

The only difference I see is that I guess they can be more "closed" with their Opera modifications.

Re:Lets hope they open source it

[gid13]

I'm a Firefox man myself, but I think Opera has one thing going for it: it's better "out of the box". I find that the Firefox browsing experience absolutely blows away that of any other browser, but only after I've taken 15 minutes getting and configuring all the right extensions, and possibly using nightly tester tools to make them work in the latest Firefox version.

Re:This is stupid. Maybe not

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right on with the cell phone, but take it one step further. Google's main revenue comes from advertising, and people use Google because of the services it provides. Entering to cellphone browsing adds one more service for users and one more avenue to connect advertisers to users. Also there has been a push to GeoTag everything and many cellphones have built in GPS locators, combine this with Google Local, and your cellphones browser could sent your Lat/Long to Google Local and pick up several results near to your location, say restaurants, movies, stores. Advertisers can pay to have their results featured more prominently. Now we have location based ways to connect advertisers and users in addition to the previous text means.

A bloody nose for Google?

[beforewisdom]

Netscape was once a small company with little money and a lot of brain power too.

Microsoft crushed them.

Google with a fraction of a percent of Microsoft's money has survived because they have solved new problems instead of competing with Microsoft on their own turf.

I.E.( "dominant browser" ) is a central part of MS's turf and they will not tolerate Google trying to snag it away from.

I see a fist fight coming.

who innovates?

[geoff lane]

Week after week the buzz is about Google and new products while MS is struggling to get updates to existing products out of the door.

So who exactly is innovating in the marketplace and who is just protecting existing investment just like an old fossilised company?

Re:Lets hope they open source it

[pthisis]

Don't diss it because it's not OSS.

Because it's not OSS, it won't run on many of my machines (where mozilla and KHTML will). They have a reasonable number of platforms but are still missing StrongArm/Linux (half my machines). :-/

Re:obvious why

[Ilgaz]

Did you see _real_ Opera mobile running on a smart phone like, lets say.. Nokia 9xxx series?

Opera is a XHTML/Flash and multimedia capable browser can run in very funny memory place.

Their recent "Opera Mini" is kind of amazing too. We are speaking about a 98KB browser running on J2ME phone. Note I have Sony Ericsson k700i and it has "Hi Fi" version, I think the 'Lo Fi' version is even less!

Opera is soon (if not already,not following scene lately) on TV Set top boxes, especially HDTV boxes too.

Also, IBM collabration promises a Voice XML browser that can run in a car dashboard.

Note, that is a 20-30 coder or little more company doing all that stuff. Of course, they have coders like guy who invented CSS etc ;)

http://www.opera.com/products/ [opera.com]

ps: I was proven wrong on Mactel decision can't happen but I think Opera is not anyone's tiny shareware company that can be bought that easy. Look at their partners.

In fact, it looks like Opera is the real "year 2005" company as everything goes wireless and they have a working product which is tested/happily bought by millions.

Re:This is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they dared, it would be the end of Google. Simple as. They're popular because they're free and we can get their content easy.

Re:Lets hope they open source it

[Seumas]

I was going to check out Opera on OSX when I was looking for a Safari/Firefox replacement and decided to stick with Camino because with just one plugin/extension, it did all the things Opera seemed to claim to do.

As for the applications footprint - I couldn't speak to that since I've never benchmarked either of them. I just know that Firefox often has dozens of tabs opened on my system and it performs smoothly. And on the mobile front - I don't know who makes "Blaze" but that's what I use on my Treo 650 (it's the thing that comes installed on it). Then again, I've only browsed to one website one time in the two months I've owned it.

I just have a hard time believing that Google might go toward Opera and away from Firefox based on a little bit of extra performance or a shiny interface. After all, they could contribute to help Firefox with the first issue and they could modify it however they want to easily produce the second. It would also contribute to the respect that people have toward them for supporting open source and doing little to no evil.

I think there's something else going on.

Re:Lets hope they open source it

[kiwi_mcd]

Google already employ Mozilla's lead developer - Ben Goodger. They also employ a number of other Mozilla developers also.

The only way this would make sense to me is if they were going to merge the codebases of Opera and Mozilla.

Is this why they started giving it away?

[ThePedanticPrick]

To get google's attention and interest?

Re:Lets hope they open source it

[Tongo]

Oh man, the "continue from last session" feature is what did it for me with Opera. Once I learned about that neat little feature I never went back to another browser. Between that, the mouse guestures, and the side panel thingy, I've been in heaven.

I just wish it had better javascript error reporting for debuggin JS. The javascript console in Firefox is the best error reporting I've found so far.

Google Toolbar for Opera

[redleaf8]

I wish they'd just make Google Toolbar for Opera. That's the only reason I don't use it. I'm addicted to it. It's the only reason I still use MSIE. Firefox has it but it's a resource hog. Opera is great as far as resources and security but no Toolbar.

Re:A bloody nose for Google?

[Dr. Spork]

Or, you might be reading an unsubstantiated rumor (google acquiring opera), which seems a whole lot more likely. You're right that Google is still too weak to compete and make money on Microsoft's turf, and that their genius is in discovering new, uncolonized turf.

I'm starting to think to think that all these Google rumors are strategically placed to pull Microsoft in 100 different directions simultaneously. One way to keep them just spinning their wheels is to force them to develop every product type-X just to prevent Google getting the drop on them with their own type-X product. Microsoft has become the quintessential follower, and these rumors are enough to lead them around by their noses. How many things that Google actually released were preceded by a long swarm of rumors? Maybe Gmail, and even that wasn't very long. I think the safe bet is that if it's a Google rumor, it's false. Compare this to Apple: They seem to leak enough so that the rumor mill is surprisingly reliable. Google is a completely different animal; I suspect they use rumors in a strategy of befuddlement.

Re:Lets hope they open source it

[apoc.famine]

Off the top of my head, Session Saver and image zoom. It's god damned amazing to simply shutdown my linux box, with everything open, and when I boot it back up, everything is where I left it. While Konqueror does this natively, Firefox needs the session saver to make this work. It even tells you if there's an issue with the saved session, and allows you to choose not to restore it. I think (not 100% sure) that session saver is also responsible for the "Snapback Tab" option under my tools menu, which allows me to restore an accidently closed tab. That might be Tabbed Browser Preferences though, which I also run.

I use a 19" LCD screen perched 3' away on the back of a big table, to give me plenty of space to work. When I'm leaned back in my chair with my feet up, some images are a little hard to see. Image Zoom is wonderful for that. Just a right and a left click, and my image is zoomed in.

While I have stumbleupon and forecast fox installed, I haven't used either in months. The above 2-3 extensions combined with adblock and flashblock are the primary ones I use.

Re:This is stupid. Maybe not

[Excelsior]

One word: cellphones.

I would go one further: mobile thin clients for the masses.

I'm talking about a very simple mobile device similar to a laptop, with wifi, but with extremely limited hardware. All it can run is Opera and perhaps Google Talk. Access to the web and GMail is all that many people would need (if they switch to using a GMail account). Ajax provides capability to develop desktop-like experiences in the browser.

With minimal hardware requirements, this should be very inexpensive. It may sound crazy, but if you put all the peices to the puzzle (the products that Google has acquired or built and the people Google has hired) it makes sense.

Re:Lets hope they open source it

[milkman_matt]

I almost got used to Opera a few months ago, then I realized it didn't have extensions. Which means no adblock. Whoops. So it was back to Firefox for me.

Absolutely 100% same story here. I was a big safari supporter, always trying new browsers though, firefox, opera, none of them were fast enough for me, opera opened fast enough, but.. I dunno, I still liked safari better. Firefox is actually quite a bit slower than safari for me, but I can't use safari anymore, #1 reason, extensions. I've got mouse gestures which I've grown dependent on, forecastfox which, although it's not a necessity, it's pretty cool. I recently added adblock though, and it made a lot of the pages I frequent a lot more tollerable. That and FlashBlock.. Now I've got Mouse Gestures, no ads, no flash, and a weather forecast and everything tuned to look and feel and behave exactly as I want it to... I'll sacrafice a little speed for the functionality. One other thing, I can't even really imagine any other browser, even if they added extensions, having them catch on to the degree of the mozilla folks, you can find extensions for everything on these things.. I'm hooked.

That being said, I love Opera and consider it a GREAT browser, if firefox didn't have me in a stranglehold, I'd definitely be using that instead.

Re:Lets hope they open source it

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Opera works on (and is currently used) mobile devices.

I don't know what Google's intent is (or even if this is just a rumour), but I'd venture a guess that it isn't about desktop.

Re:Lets hope they open source it

[TheGavster]

Firefox's default behavior is non-tabbed. Every action must be specially told to use tabs. A few extensions later, and things mostly stay in tabs ... mostly. But now that everything is in a tab, all of these tabs are the size of the window. Unfortunately, a lot of pages use a smaller popup window for certain things ("larger view", "details", "specifications") which looks really bad the size of my screen.

Opera's default behavior is tabbed. Everything, everywhere, uses tabs. A page wants a new window? Have a new tab. You have to explicitly tell it to split a tab off into a new window. And all those tabs behave as MDI windows inside the Opera parent window, so pages that want to be small can be small, or I can tile pages, or whatever.