Opera Acquires Fastmail.fm

mattcsn writes "Opera Software just bought email service provider Fastmail.fm. Here's hoping that Opera uses a light touch and keeps the email service as unchanged as possible. From the article: 'FastMail has included a FAQ, in which it says that users who wish to not transfer their accounts over to Opera have to go into settings and indicate just that. Not acting upon the email the company sent out to its users or actively accepting the transfer will result in Opera assuming control over the mailbox and the account registration details. As to the reason for selling, FastMail says the market was getting increasingly competitive and that Opera's expertise in web browsers and especially the mobile market would help the company grow and take on the next big challenges in running and building an email service.'"

Which country is home base now?

[tempwaldo]

I'm hoping Jeremy is reading this thread. I've been a fastmail user for 9+ years. One selling point that Jeremy touched on in the previous article [slashdot.org] is that Fastmail has been bound by Australian privacy laws, which he describes as the most protective on the planet. Will Fastmail now be a Norwegian company bound by their laws instead? That would be my assumption. What change does this mean for privacy at Fastmail? This is not adressed in today's announcement or the FAQ.

Re:What for?

[sznupi]

I would guess Opera Mini will get soon a nicely integrated creation process and access to email account; so Opera Software will jump on the badwagon of hundreds of millions of people getting their first email adress (people in so called "3rd world countries", having access to the internet only via fairly simple phones; phones on which Opera Mini is very popular, it certainly helps it being #1 mobile web browser). Opera can also offer it in nice package to mobile carriers, I guess.
Who knows, perhaps next step will be some integration with My Opera and also basic mobile client for that online community.