Microsoft to Buy Opera

By PeterClark
in Back Page News

 Share

Recommended Posts

Mentor

PeterClark

Posted
Posted
Here comes a surprise. In a recent conversation with one of our insiders at Microsoft, the source revealed that Microsoft Corp., the world?s largest software maker, has acquired Opera Software, makers of the Opera browser. The insider reported that both Microsoft and Google were trying to bid on Opera, but in the end, the software maker took the lead.

http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?opti...sk=view&id=2108

:|:|

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/411478-microsoft-to-buy-opera/
Share on other sites
Mentor

PeterClark

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I find that hard to believe.

why?

Perhaps the most desirable feature that Opera has to offer is its mobile version of the browser. Thus far, it?s the best mobile browser currently on portable devices, and it will surely give Microsoft an easy entry into the mobile market, especially as that market continues to flourish gradually.
Grand Master

Malisk

Posted
Posted

What??

Just yesterday, Slashdot said: Dvorak says MS should buy Opera

THAT I believe though, as he's generally a speculating sensationalism guy. ;)

Due to this weird article coincidence, is this maybe some misunderstood "news" on CoolTechZone's part?

OTOH, they refer to "insiders at MS" so who knows. :s

But it's all very strange, as MS is heavily developing IE 7 right this moment.

Grand Master

Malisk

Posted
Posted

Hmm, well, the only reason I can see this is being true is for the mobile market reason given above.

I'll believe it when Opera confirms it. Which will be the moment I will stop using it.

It won't stop me -- feature sets and functionality do. But I can understand some have this "boycott" philosophy. ;)

edit: btw, this is pretty funny since I posted a thread on the Opera forums yesterday, asking "MS won't buy Opera, right??" as a joke to the Dvorak article above. :o

Grand Master

Chicane-UK Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

I call BS.. I just don't believe that Microsoft isn't capable of getting its browser into a decent state without buying in another company. Surely it'd be miles cheaper to just coax some good browser coders into the IE team instead?!

Just makes no sense at all.

Experienced

pixated

Posted
Posted

Hmm, well, the only reason I can see this is being true is for the mobile market reason given above.

It won't stop me -- feature sets and functionality do. But I can understand some have this "boycott" philosophy. ;)

edit: btw, this is pretty funny since I posted a thread on the Opera forums yesterday, asking "MS won't buy Opera, right??" as a joke to the Dvorak article above. :o

I don't really have that philosophy. But when it comes to MS I tend to avoid their stuff as much as possible. Actually I'd probably continue to use this Opera 9 Preview 1 until it really gets outdated at which point I'd switch to Firefox.

I like both browsers, but I'm not using anything from MS that's not open source, which means I'm not using anything (well apart from winblows..). :whistle:

Grand Master

Malisk

Posted
Posted

You'd think they could also just purchase Opera's division for mobile development if that was what they were after. :-/

I also have a hard time understanding exactly which Opera features they can't implement in IE 7+ without buying a company. It's just ordinary features, that's all. :) And MS is a huge company..

I don't really have that philosophy. But when it comes to MS I tend to avoid their stuff as much as possible.

OK, maybe not "boycott" but "avoid without knowing what it'll be like" then? :) I prefer to not judge prematurely personally, but I understand if people have a stance against using MS products where security must be high, given their track record. However, keep in mind Opera's browser in its current form isn't open source either.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • Browser vendors pen open letter to Microsoft saying "enough is enough"

      By Primey_ · Posted

      The nerve of Google to sign this.
    • Browser vendors pen open letter to Microsoft saying "enough is enough"

      By s0nic69 · Posted

      I don't understand the vision. Do people really want to buy a new computer from Dell with 6 browsers installed? We all keep asking for Microsoft to stop having so much junk on their OS, and adding a bunch of browsers seems to go against that. Ideally, we would just be asked what browser we want during OOBE but Google is just going to pay Dell a bunch of money to include Chrome. Additionally, would you want your phones to start including all the browsers too when you get them? The only thing I ever wanted was to be able to uninstall IE or edge and I believe you are now able to. I do agree that microsoft needs to chill with their "are you sure you don't want to try edge before you install chrome" ads when going to download chrome.
    • Browser vendors pen open letter to Microsoft saying "enough is enough"

      By The Norwegian Drone Pilot · Posted

      The funny thing here is that like 70% or so of the web browser users use 'Google Chrome' as web browser. What I don't understand is that why on earth would ANYONE choose 'Google Chrome' on Windows when 'Microsoft Edge' is not just better in most things, but it's already there right out of the box for the Windows users. Microsoft Edge has less data collection (yes, that's a fact), less RAM usage and is more optimized for Windows (as it's a Microsoft product) right out of the box. I'm sure you will come with the argument of bloat in Microsoft Edge. Sure, but most of that can be fixed with a simple tool (there are many good ones out there for this). Yes, that require a couple of clicks in the same way as it requires several clicks to install 'Google Chrome'. And I'm sure you really love the 4 GB of AI-slop data 'Google Chrome' is downloading for Chrome without you agreeing to it. Fun right? Sure, the way Microsoft is pushing 'Microsoft Edge' on users might not be the best way of doing it and might need to change. But I would never choose 'Google Chrome' over 'Microsoft Edge' today anyways. I'm sure there was a period back in the days when 'Google Chrome' actually was better in most things, but that period is not today.
    • JetBrains rolls out IntelliJ IDEA update with Markdown preview fixes and more

      By David Uzondu · Posted

      JetBrains rolls out IntelliJ IDEA update with Markdown preview fixes and more by David Uzondu Image via JetBrains IntelliJ 2026.1.3 from JetBrains has landed, bringing several highly requested bug fixes that target common UI glitches and terminal rendering issues. If you run tmux inside the integrated terminal, the IDE no longer renders the cursor above the active line. The Markdown preview bug, which was fixed in this release, had annoyed developers for quite some time, as the preview pane failed to render images saved outside the project directory. Instead of displaying the actual image, the IDE simply showed a broken image icon, a problem that stuck around for two years before this update. Over on Windows, developers running WSL can now use wsl.exe to spin up their environments without losing terminal functionality. In previous builds, launching a terminal shell with something like wsl.exe -d ubuntu inside a Windows-based project broke both shell integration and active process detection. Other bug fixes in this release include: An issue where Gradle sync incorrectly reported success as a failure on WSL when using Gradle 9.5.0. A syntax highlighting bug that flagged valid Java for-loop initialization blocks with multiple statements as incorrect. A warning bug that triggered a false non-null local variable alert when using JSpecify annotations. A database generation bug that hid the option to use a DELETE statement instead of a TRUNCATE checkbox. A Kotlin highlighting failure where an assertion error in the Gradle redundant library inspection broke error highlighting. A UI bug where the ComboBox popup lacked a maximum height restriction. A Snowflake syntax error where DataGrip failed to support the "create temp" command. A Svelte syntax parsing failure that incorrectly flagged quotes inside inline expressions. A VCS repository manager deadlock that triggered thread pool exhaustion. A memory leak where the LazyTree component kept all previous versions of a tree in memory. IntelliJ 2026.1.3 is the third bug fix release for the IntelliJ 2026.1 series. The first one landed back in April with a fix for the WSL Python interpreter freeze, another fix for guest participants using Emmet abbreviations, and corrected WildFly server deployment errors.
    • Browser vendors pen open letter to Microsoft saying "enough is enough"

      By haxasaur · Posted

      That stupid annoying Sign in with Google on all these sites now... get the fk outta here

  • Recent Achievements

    • Collaborator
      Asgardi earned a badge
      Collaborator
    • Conversation Starter
      mobandz earned a badge
      Conversation Starter
    • Apprentice
      fernan99 went up a rank
      Apprentice
    • One Month Later
      nothanks earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      B2Proxy earned a badge
      One Month Later

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      469
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      243
    3. 3
      Skyfrog
      79
    4. 4
      FloatingFatMan
      73
    5. 5
      Michael Scrip
      60
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!