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May 25, 2016

One China, One Opera!

The GSMA recently reported that Opera cleared another hurdle in its sale to a Chinese Consortium.  The consortium includes internet firms Kunlun and Qihoo, as well as investment funds Golden Brick and Yonglian.  It is believed by the board of Opera that the sale will increase the adoption of Opera in China and other emerging markets.  Traditionally, Opera has been pushing to be part of an open mobile strategy.  It may be that the migration will impact its use by smart phone companies in China.

You may remember, we recently interviewed Jon von Tetzchner, the founder of Opera, as he departed and started his new browser company, Vivaldi.  Jon left when the move to sell Opera was set in motion.  Jon’s view is that he always prefers to be building.

With a small development team, he is now implementing his vision in Vivaldi.

“Vivaldi 1.0 is both a throwback and a look ahead. It’s a ‘Modern Classic ‘designed to help our users get the most out of all the time they spend with their browser,”  Von Tetzchner said. “Millions of people have already agreed that they want a better browser, one that puts them in control. Everything we build is in service of the user. We have no investors and their agendas to dictate our progress. There’s no exit strategy and we’re here to stay. All we want to do is give people a browser they’re proud to use and that we’re proud to call Vivaldi.”

The questions that have to be asked are: Does browser control have any real value going forward, and does a Chinese browser mean something fragmented from the rest of the HTML5 W3C quest for full interoperability?

Jon Von Tetzchner will be a keynote at DevConFive on April 2.




Edited by Ken Briodagh


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