update: Official denial by Opera. There's a
rumour that Microsoft has bought
Opera software, makers of the (closed source) fast, cross-platform and lightweight
Opera web browser,
Opera mobile (Symbian S60, Windows mobile) and the recently released
Opera mini (for Java phones).
It's not hard to understand why Microsoft would be interested. Opera is very standards compliant, more so than IE6 (and IE7 perhaps). Opera is obviously very well engineered, with a very fast renderer and extremely low memory footprint. Most importantly, Opera runs on platforms that Microsoft wants to reach out to and (in the end) dominate or conquer.
Such platforms are
Symbian OS (in different series), a common OS for mobile phones. Opera rules that territory today.
Such platforms are
Maemo (you've heard about
Nokia 770, haven't you?), the exciting new open platform that Nokia puts work into, based on the Linux-kernel, X11 and GTK+, to name some open source technologies. Opera rules that territory today.
Such platforms are desktop Linux (
Fedora Core,
Debian,
Ubuntu,
SUSE,
Mandriva,
Slackware,
RHEL,
CentOS, the list goes on..) with
KDE (
QT) and/or
Gnome (
GTK+) integration. Linux users today mainly use
Firefox or
Konqueror, desktop Linux are getting more and more momentum and Microsoft understands that. Microsoft wants to reach that platform, for the same reasons that they want to reach Mac OS X (although most OS X users runs Safari or Firefox), and compared to porting IE to Linux from scratch (which could be a huge project depending on their codebase) lots of time could be saved by going with Opera (which has a Linux QT-version today). I expect Microsoft to port Windows Media Player to Linux soon too, for the same reasons that they have it for OS X, but that's a different story.
Such platforms are
Mac OS X, since the old Internet Explorer for Mac will receive
no more updates after new-year and will cease to exist as a download a month after that. Apple releasing
Safari (the Konqueror technology
KHTML-based browser) for OS X was Microsofts worst nightmare, they lost their dominance (yes, most OS X users ran IE before that) in an increadibly short time. At first it looked liked they wouldn't do anything about it and keep a kind of wait-and-see attitude (halting all serious work on IE for Mac). They need to hold on to OS X, either Microsoft ports IE7 to Mac OS X (which they could as they've done it before, but i suspect it's a whole lot of work) or they try a short-cut - Opera.
Such platforms are
Windows mobile, their own platform for handhelds and phones. Many users seem to prefer Opera before IE for this platform, with Microsoft buying Opera their dominance would be total (neither Firefox nor a KHTML-based browser are available for this platform).
And actually, such platforms are Windows XP and Vista. Microsoft wants to grab users from Opera and Firefox.
If this rumour is true and Microsoft will buy Opera, I expect Microsoft to merge the "full" Opera web browser with Internet Explorer, and release it as IE8. This won't happen until summer 2007 at earliest, and likely even later (due to their
track record). IE7 will release as planned (first half 2006 or something) and not contain a single line of Opera-code (it's in beta already). I expect IE8 to be more like IE7 with some Opera-technology merged in rather than the opposite. This could be a huge project and Microsoft could choose to skip most of it. They will look into Opera's renderer though, and they will look into the cross-platform nature of Opera.
The bottom line is, buying Opera is a cheap (relatively speaking, you've seen all the TV-commercials for Xbox 360 haven't you?) ticket into other competitors territory for Microsoft. Grabbing existing Symbian userbase would probably be worth it alone.
They might also just as well buy it and discontinue the whole thing, trying to help sales for Windows Mobile as a platform. But Nokia has (once again) been alert and are creating a
KHTML-based browser for Symbian S60 that looks very promising. I think Nokia will port that one to maemo as well.
Besides cooking up various conspiracy theories then. Many people can become losers it this goes through: the current users of Opera browsers. That depends on what Microsoft does with is newly bought toy. I don't really think that all of us that neither use Opera nor IE will get affected at all. IE users will (in the best case) get a little better browser. The real winner is Opera software. They will receive a huge pile of cash.
I started studying m.sc. computer engineering at
Linköpings University in the autumn of 2002, after deciding to take a break from working with programming computer- and videogames (for Ataris, playstations, PCs and Xboxes). As a coincidence I visited the swedish Opera-team (they have their office here in Linköping) just before deciding to start studying and they seemed to be a bunch of really nice guys. Four computer engineering students that first started as HERN labs, working on a contract BeBox (BeOS, remember?) port of Opera and ended up working more and more on the core Opera browser since they were so good at it, eventually beeing bought up by norwegian Opera software and expanding with a whole lot of employees. You've come a long way!
So however the story ends, congrats to your work Opera-guys and
keep on singing! If the rumour isn't true then perhaps it's time to look into GPL'ing your core renderer and possible more parts of your browser? MySQL did it successfully, Trolltech have had much success (but I don't need to tell
you guys about that) and I believe you could as well. Keep the copyright of the code and you could choose to do whatever "nasty" stuff you'd want with it, but with the GPL protecting and encouraging the community. Another open source renderer, standing besides Gecko and KHTML?
Merry christmas all!
