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Opera Businesses China The Almighty Buck

Chinese Tech Group Offers To Buy Opera; Board Endorses 120

jones_supa writes: There's been plenty of speculation around the future of web browser maker Opera, and now that looks like it will soon be resolved. Today the Norway-headquartered company confirmed that it has received a $1.2 billion acquisition offer from a group fronted by Chinese consumer tech companies Kunlun Tech and Qihoo 360. The deal is for 100% of the company, and it represents a 53% premium on the company's valuation based on its most recent trading price. Opera's board said in a statement (PDF) that it has "unanimously decided to recommend" its shareholders to accept the bid. The final deal is subject to government and shareholders' approvals.
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Chinese Tech Group Offers To Buy Opera; Board Endorses

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Please no. Please? Opera is one of the few innovators in the browser space that manages to pack features without getting bloated.

    • Re: Noooooooooo (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Opera hasnt been like that for 6-7 years. Its garbage now as a desktop app.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Opera hasnt been like that for 6-7 years. Its garbage now as a desktop app.

        It will soon become the equivalent of Chinese spyware.

      • Opera hasnt been like that for 6-7 years. Its garbage now as a desktop app.

        It's crap for you...I use it on my Mac on El Capitan and it uses less memory than Chrome with the same amount of extensions. Let alone Opera pushes out (security) updates faster than Google.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Yes, making a reskinned Chrome is super innovative.

      • Telling the truth is flamebait? Downmodding Opera fangirl, please do tell what is innovative about current Opera? It looks 95% like Chrome.

        • Yes. Yes, it is.
        • Perhaps its the same person who did this: http://news.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org]

          Probably a troll who got their five modpoints by accident and now wastes it as trollish as possible.

  • by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @09:33AM (#51478413) Homepage
    So, it will now be the Beijing Opera! [travelchinaguide.com]
  • If this goes through, Opera is getting ripped out of every computer I had it on. Time to go looking for a replacement browser.

    The difference in culture surrounding privacy between the Chinese and Norwegians is the dark side of Earth's moon to Mercury's sun-side.
    • by Kobun ( 668169 )
      Thank you to the folks who recommended Vivaldi elsewhere on the page. I'm currently giving it a try.
      • You know that it's based on Chromium, right? Opera stopped being opera a long time ago.

        My question is, why would they (the Chinese) pay so much for the name (it's not like they're paying for the code - Chromium source code is freely available), unless it's to put their own brand of spyware into it.

        • by Kobun ( 668169 )
          That's pretty much my point. Call me paranoid but having an installed base of software, WITH AUTOUPDATE, makes it trivial to sneak spyware out to a wide array of computers quickly.
        • I'd be especially wary of Opera's Turbo feature (which I think is only on their mobile browser now?). The feature where an Opera server downloads the webpage, recompresses it, and then sends it to your device. Saves on bandwidth, but also a prime opportunity to inject something nasty into the webpage you're trying to view.

    • If this goes through, Opera is getting ripped out of every computer I had it on. Time to go looking for a replacement browser.

      The difference in culture surrounding privacy between the Chinese and Norwegians is the dark side of Earth's moon to Mercury's sun-side.

      Yup, here too. Though I've begun using Vivaldi on my desktop(s) as my main browser, I do still use Opera when I need another browser and on my mobile devices. Sad times, my friend. Sad times.

  • ..the fat lady has sung.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Opela

    • Opela

      That might have been vaguely funny, if it has been about a Japanese company. The 'R'-sound is quite commonly used in Chinese.

  • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @09:41AM (#51478481) Homepage Journal
    $1.8 billion for a company that lost $51 million last year. Good investment.
    • by Luthair ( 847766 )
      1.8 billion to checkout and compile Chromium ;)
  • I'd keep an eye on this in the next few weeks:
    http://www.opera.com/privacy [opera.com]

  • by MetalliQaZ ( 539913 ) on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @09:49AM (#51478549)

    Didn't Opera buy Fastmail a few years ago? As a long time Fastmail user, like so many other tech people, I'd worry about my email provider being controlled by the Chinese.

  • China blues (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iserlohn ( 49556 ) on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @09:56AM (#51478609) Homepage

    China is due for a massive correction in the economy. Debt driven growth has reached saturation and from now on, we will see a lot of deleveraging and money being printed (ie. QE) to prevent deflation.

    Acquisitions is one of the best ways to swap depreciating Yuan assets (to use as collateral) and turn them into foreign assets. As the likelihood that CNY will devalue increases, you will see more and more of these desperate deals.

    • Re:China blues (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BarbaraHudson ( 3785311 ) <barbara@jane@hudson.icloud@com> on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @10:15AM (#51478739) Journal
      It's not just China that is due for a "massive correction in the economy." Look at how many first-world countries have negative interest rates, because printing money just meant more money stuck in "financial investments" rather than productive ventures.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        A good part of the pressure sending interest rates to negative is the capital flight from China. After 8 years of global expansion the world is due for a recession.

  • by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @09:57AM (#51478615) Homepage

    revive the Presto engine!

    Seriously, I would hate the world where everything revolves around WebKit though I've got a sneaking suspicion we already live in it.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      You misspelled Blink.

  • Opera Mini (Score:4, Interesting)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @10:57AM (#51479029)

    Opera Mini intercepts all web traffic in order to reshape/recompress

    It acts like a sort of "Man n the middle" for web traffic.

    Put on your tinfoil hats boys and girls, this will be a wonderful ride.

    PS: Also, think of all the Symbian(S60)/ASHA(S40)/NokiaX phones whose browser and store is handled by Opera now, by way of Microsoft...

    http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/flow/item/20265_Nokia_Store_to_be_replaced_by_.php

  • Opera already was on its way into a death spiral. They decided they couldn't keep up with the pace development of other rendering engines with Presto, so they said they were going to clean-sheet remake Opera using Blink.

    Well, what they really did was make a crappy Chromealike skin for Blink and give the middle finger to their loyal users. Why would you download or use this instead of Chrome/Chromium? It doesn't make sense.

    Luckily, some of the original people have been actually working on a real "Opera on Bl

    • by xiox ( 66483 )

      I use the mobile version as it is the only browser I know which does decent reflow of text when you zoom in.

      • Yes, that is a nice feature.

        If they would go ahead and add extension support to Opera Mobile like the teased with that developer preview a couple years ago, I would reinstall it... that would get me off mobile Firefox (ugh), which does have extension support.

        Sam

  • I start reading in Chinese.

  • Think I'll get rid of Opera before there are any more updates and move to the Vivaldi web browser (created by opera guys apparently). when the Chinese nation gets their hands on anything, 2 things generally happen: Attempts to make it cheaper at our expense, or attempts to get more from us, again at our expense. I'm not saying westerns don't do some of this too, but China has a lot more practice at it. QQ and WeChat are two good examples.
  • Vivaldi MUST hurry with it's stability and polish. I've been using the snapshot release(s) as my main browser for a couple months now, but still put up with a few stupid annoying bugs -- mainly extension-related. But I absolutely LOVE how customizable the interface is -- I was able to bring back my most-beloved Opera feature, tabs on the side! Everything else they're doing is so in that Opera Presto vein, that we Opera fans do truly now have a successor to the Opera Presto line. It'll be so much better

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