Opera denies Microsoft rumors, clarifies it is not for sale

Opera denies Microsoft rumors, clarifies it is not for sale

For the second time in 10 days, the owners of the Opera Browser ASA Company had to clarify that they have not been sold out to some other company. Earlier it was Google, which was reported to have bought the browser company, and a couple of days back, a tech site reported that Microsoft had taken over this little company based in Norway.

Opera had earlier denied the rumors linking to search engine giant Google. Now, they have again denied any links to the software giant Microsoft. One of the hottest reasons for any company to look into acquiring Opera is their lead in the browser segment for the mobile market. The company specializes in developing web browsers for small screen devices.

Opera representative Eskil Sivertsen said on Friday: “I don’t know why these rumors are happening. My guess, frankly, is as good as yours.� Microsoft has not made any comments on these rumors started by the U.S. based Web site CoolTechZone. However, market analysts believe that Microsoft would indeed benefit a lot from acquiring a firm as capable as Opera.

However, it sounded like a weird idea to us at TechWhack considering Opera have strong reasons not to be taken over by Microsoft. Most Opera developers and users are sharp criticizers of the software giant. In fact, some years ago Opera blamed the company for misleading their users into believing that they were using an inferior product by sending wrong code to Opera users from their sites especially MSN.com.

Opera on their part has bigger plans to target the mobile market. They recently released a broad public preview of Opera Mini, which is a java based web browser capable of running on older generation Mobile Phones.

Source: stuff.techwhack.com/archives/2005/12/25/251211-opera-denies-microsoft-rumors/