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Tim Thorpe (Blog) - April 15, 2006 10:27 AM

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8 comment(s) - last by ted61.. on Apr 18 at 12:43 PM

Google + Opera?

Imagine the possibilities

It seems like a perfect match. Google, the world’s most popular search engine and web solutions provider, and Opera, the seemingly unknown yet increasingly popular web browser should team up.

Google has an ever expanding catalog of great web applications, Gmail, Google Talk, Gcal, The Google Homepage, Google News, Google Finance, Google Earth...the list goes on. As Google expands it's online dominance it makes sense to take the next step and capture the mobile market. As the wireless networks here in the United States begin to catch up with those overseas (eg. Japan) the timing is ripe for Google to make it's move and that is where Opera comes in to play.

Why Opera?
Recently Opera announced that it was making it's browser Free to all who want it, and who wouldn't want "the fastest browser in the world?" But to understand why Google and Opera would make a good match we need to understand why Opera decided to go free (as in beer) in the first place.

First, Opera was getting squeezed from the explosive adoption of FireFox and wasn't gaining market share as they would have liked. Makes sense, it's hard to compete with a product that includes Opera's trademark Tabbed browsing and is doing it for free. But FireFox did something else that Opera is still lacking on, and that is they made it wildly extensible. Allowing users to safely extend their browser with custom scripts was sheer brilliance on the part of the Mozilla Corp. And I think really ate in to any future market share for Opera.

Second, Opera made enough with its search box AdSense revenue to offset the costs of having to charge customers for the browser. Basically every time someone used the integrated Google search box in Opera, Opera would get a kick back of any revenue Google made from that search. A penny here, a penny there doesn't sound like much until you have a few million people throwing pennies at you, then it adds up to a few million bucks. From Google's perspective it can bring all of that revenue it is paying out to Opera back in house, and that can't be a bad thing for the books.

The desktop version of Opera is what many people are familiar with; however what many don't realize is that Opera has an extremely powerful yet lightweight browser designed specifically for small screen devices such as PDAs and Smart phones called Opera Mobile. I've used Opera Mobile since it's infancy on my PDA for as long as it's been available and I have to tell you that it does laps around mobile IE or any other mobile web browser I've tried. Seriously it eats them for lunch, spits them out and feeds them to Apple Newton's.

They also have a version for "not so" Smart Phones called Opera Mini. Google has a great opportunity to capitalize on Opera's success in the mobile browsing arena and bring Google's suite of great web based applications to mobile devices easily and effectively.

Imagine reading your e-mail, chatting over AIM / Google Talk, getting your Google calendar and getting driving directions or contact information for local businesses, searching your favorite websites from an array of devices, all on a single software platform. It makes perfect sense. Over time the product offerings could be expanded to include Google Earth and allow you to use the GPS locator in your phone to get a bird’s eye view of where you are. Plug in a destination and you've got the power of the digital globe to tell you how to get there. All on one device and Google doesn't have to spend a single cent developing such a device.

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No, please dont.

By Griswold on 4/15/2006 2:19:48 PM , Rating: 2

They shouldnt buy Opera because I'm afraid as to what Google might do to my favourite browser. Like forcing all the crap upon me I dont use anyway - unless they do it the way Opera has been doing ever since: Deliver all the features but leave it to the user to disable it and therefore keep it away from the UI.

RE: No, please dont.

By Tim Thorpe on 4/15/2006 7:53:21 PM , Rating: 2

I don't think you have too much to fear in that regard. Look at what Google has done with the other products it has aquired such as Keyhole (Google Earth) or Picasa. Those applications don't seem to have been crippled by Google so I would expect the same thing to happen with Opera.

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RE: No, please dont.

By Furen on 4/17/2006 9:29:52 PM , Rating: 2

But they'd change its name to Google something or other... (and probably try to bundle google desktop search with it)

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RE: No, please dont.

By Griswold on 4/18/2006 4:27:05 AM , Rating: 2

I'm just afraid they bundle (as mentioned below) Google Desktop and plaster Google Toolbars all over the UI, that cant be removed.

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Seems very unlikely

By sgd on 4/16/2006 9:48:35 AM , Rating: 2

Google have been very close to Mozilla recently. They have employed and now pay Firefox's lead engineer and I think they contributed a lot to the foundation. Google currently pay individuals for advertising Firefox on their websites. Google also supports Firefox for all of their webbased applications. Gmail doesn't work properly with Opera, and Google Calendar doesn't work at all with Opera. If Google bought Opera they would have to do some hard work to ensure all their services worked in it. It is more likely I think that Google develop their own browser possibly based on the Firefox code.

RE: Seems very unlikely

By Tim Thorpe on 4/16/2006 9:10:33 PM , Rating: 2

That is very true, and on the desktop my personal view is that FireFox is a better browser, (flame away if you must narzy2001[remov..e]@gmail.com ) but Opera is a great mobile browser, and that is what I was getting at in the entry.

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RE: Seems very unlikely

By Griswold on 4/18/2006 4:31:49 AM , Rating: 2

If Googles products dont work with Opera, then they're just another giant who doesnt test their products properly. Like so many other sites that wont work with Opera nor FF but only with IE.

Lay the blame on the site, not the browser following the W3C standards.

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I don't know about google...

By ted61 on 4/18/2006 12:43:14 PM , Rating: 2

I don't know about google but I have not used opera in years. Thanks to your post, I tried it again and I love it.

Opera in now my primary browser. Now I just have to get the plug-ins to work for linux.