Is Google About to Buy Opera?

I doubt it's true. Althought, that would explain why all of a sudden I can access my Gmail account without having to resort to Firefox.

With the tight friendship Google and Firefox seem to have I doubt this is true (I have been wrong before).

Let me throw this out there: why would Google spend a ton of cash on Opera to get at mobile devices and desktops when it can donate less money to FF and dictate that the money go towards a mobile version of FF? Or, because it is so open source friendly, donate some Google engineers to FF and help them design such a browser.

I haven't look at the Mozilla Open source agreement in a while but would Google even have to buy FF? Seems like they should be able to take its source code, modify it, and redistribute with an acknowledgement to the Mozilla foundation.

The only thing plausable is the mobile phone angle but, even that, seems like a stretch.

I WOULD SAY THEY WILL GET INTO THE BROWSER war it seems a natural progression and a good way to push there ad revenue and search on desktop products. itwill happen im sure of it.

uve also got to think sprint media are launching a search engine with built in word, excel and paint program. and google are in talks to purchase rom them

Whether it is FF or Opera, it makes sense for Google to enter the market. First a browser, then eventually an OS? I don't know about everyone else, but I would be much more likely to buy a Google OS than ANYTHING made by Microsoft.

I would like to see Google go for Opera. That would balance out Firefox once IE is dethroned. I would hate to see another product (Firefox) just come in and sweep the market. I'm all about competition.

Yeah. And in the end, Internet Explorer would also have to fight a little more.

Nah, google should have a browser with every tweak available to users through extensions, but be very small in footprint if the user does not want all the tweaks. FF sounds more likely.

Also, Google would not want to get into OS creation. Just have a broswer that has version for all OSs and provide functionality via Java, Shockwave, and Flash. Imagine (and it is possible) having office applications like a word processor and spreadsheet program running on Java through a Googld branded broswer. Hmm, sounds like Larry Ellison's vision 8 years ago is not so far fetched anymore.

I believe Opera is based on QT. And as a KDE fan and developer I would welcome it.

*groans*

Google supports all these multi OS software products...
Where is Google Earth for Linux? :(

Makes sense to buy Opera if for no other reason to keep someone else from buying them.
Opera is a great little browser. Feed it a poorly written web page and it rarely complains or even hangs.

>when it can donate less money to FF and dictate that the money go towards a mobile version of FF?
>Or donate some Google engineers to FF and help them design such a browser.

FF/Mozilla/Gecko are a big beast, and it may very well be that it's simply not suited. As shown by Nokia, they have already spent considerably time and money on a embedded version. They are now using Opera and KHTML on their platforms.

Has anyone considered that google wants to OWN a browser. Not just extend an open source project. I have yet to see google's tools offer their source up for the download. If google did, then there would be all of their goodies for linux. Google is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Google's philosophy on open source is kind of like giving money to the homeless or Charity. They only do it because it makes them look good.

maybe Google is just trying to buy-out competition to FF. Or better, buy Opera - refine and combine it with FF - roll out their own browser. Sounds a lot easier than it truly is to do that

it would be great to see google buy opera. i know that opera is good, much better and more secure than ie can ever be. its also much smaller than downloading firefox/mozilla. i would like to see the underdog challenge the top one. here's when you'll see improvements on all sides since the top dog, ie can and may be challenged if google ever buys opera.

Does Google need a simple browser as Gtalk do, or a flaring browser.
I wonder...

This could have something to do with opera becoming freeware. The next step would be to go open source and then google could come out with their own varient of opera. Right now opera makes their money from the cell phone companies and can keep any code that is specifically for the cell phones as a closed source project but with the browser it shouldn't be a problem making it an open source project.

It's not like Google would stop making toolbars for IE and Firefox if they bought Opera. Actually, if Microsoft had any brains, THEY'D buy Opera and keep it out of Google's hands.

See, then M$ could call it "Internet Super Explorer" and have their very own (tested & proven!) "power user" browser that could truly compete with Firefox.

AND, if they kept the cross-platform compatibility (it would be SCARY if M$ was that smart!), they'd start locking up the power user browser market even for Mac and Linux (because the M$ name behind it would force more webpage compatibility than Firefox!).

So in case you think it would be "evil" for Google to buy it, just imagine if M$ did what I said above.
Be thankful for small favors....

what ever google is been doing, thats amazing,, and i hope, IE will get into trouble in near future,,, ,,,,, mr gates,,watch out,, google is coming ur way,, slowly but steadily

Google's core business is information. Sofware is incidental. With Web 2.0, things are moving beyond software because that is not where the high profits are now. The race is on to own large sets of hard-to-duplicate information.

There seems to be some confusion as to the nature of Google's open-source philosophy. Google do have proprietary algorithms for sorting and searching. They will never make these open source - obviously, because they are better than the competition.

On the other hand, Google provide APIs to allow developers to create novel applications that add value to the information they provide, perhaps by combining it with other information.

Amazon and eBay are also exemplars of this approach.

So, Google does depend very much on the open-source community.

When looking at whether Google are going to buy a browser, we have to take this into consideration. Does the browser in question have any particular advantages. There probably isn't much of an Open Source culture on the Mobile market. Buying Opera may well be a way of getting into this market in some ill-defined way. So this could be very much a strategic move by Google, in spite of it's being slightly out of line with the Google philosophy. (They would much rather leave the open-source community use the web-services they provide.)

I surely endorse a Google owned OPERA and hope they do! I been using OPERA even way before FF ever got their act together to straighten it out. Notice how many peeps mostly only turned to FireFox out-of-spite to IE (which is good anyway) but completely missed out on all the Excellent essence that OPERA is been superb at for quite some time now. OPERA is already the 'quickest' browser burnin rubber at both FF & IE in velocity. Otherwise it is jam packed with every feature imaginable without putting a drain on the computer or your nerves.
Google OPERA! A GOOD IDEA WHO'S TIME IS COME!!

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Opera is the smallest and fastest browser out there. If Google does acquire the browser, I hope they don't bloat it with a lot of garbage. Actually I hope google keeps their hands off of Opera and sticks with fat, slow, Firefox.