Chinese Tech Group Led by Qihoo 360 Bids $1.2B for Browser Maker Opera (opens in new tab)

Sigh. Opera is the only (mobile) web browser that implements text reflow sensibly, limiting block level elements to screen width.

So when you zoom into text that's wider than screen, it always reflows so that just vertical scrolling is required to read it.

Other mobile browsers force me to either zoom out making text illegibly small or to continuously scroll horizontally.

I so don't want to lose such a useful browser. If Opera is gone, I might have to write my own to do the same. Or more likely to hack Chrome or Firefox to do more sensible layout.

Given all the horrors @taviso posted concerning Comodo and AVAST etc, it's really really sad to see that the remains of Opera Software are now in fact being bought by a consortium that amongst other things are running "an anti-virus maker that ships a browser". What could possibly go wrong?

And the fact that Qihoo recently got busted in a Volkswagen-like scam when their "anti virus software" was tested does not inspire confidence in their business ethics either: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2917384/malware-vulnera...

The wikipedia page for "360 Secure Browser" says: "High usage numbers may be due to the browser being difficult to uninstall and a warning pop-up that appears when a user attempts to install another browser, claiming that the other browser is unsafe and should not be run." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_Secure_Browser

This article gives a bit more context: http://www.digital-dd.com/qihoo-browser-war/

I guess this was coming. Opera was on a long and painful road to irrelevance, right from when they threw away all their amazing work to become yet another chrome variant minus the most useful features that really made Opera what it was - respected, lightweight, fast, and supremely customisable.

As for this acquisition, it's a surefire way of alienating whatever userbase they managed to hold on to. Qihoo is a purveyor of questionable software to put it mildly, their servers are in mainland China and are probably controlled by the CCP/PLA unit 61398, and I sure as hell won't trust them with anything.

As a Norwegian I am not sure what to think about this. Every single dam successful tech company created in this country gets bought out: Fast, Trolltech, Tandberg and now Opera. And I've been part of several which has experienced this. Sometimes it might make the product bigger in the market but often it has not been a success. Certainly not seen from a Norwegian perspective, with respect to jobs or corporate culture.

Opera is long dead. Since they've started to work on this chromium version they stoppted listenning to their users.

Vivaldi is the new Opera.

This might sound naive but it is a serious question.

Wouldn't it have been the best way for Microsoft to get a hold of the mobile market by buying Opera then "updating" people's apps to a new version which would be "Edge for Mobile" ?

As it is, Microsoft has practically zero imprint on the mobile browser market.

Would there be any problems with my proposed approach?

Wonder how this will affect Chinese citizens that have used and trusted Opera Mini to bypass censorship and the great firewall of China in the past. What browsing history is kept by the Opera Mini servers?

Didn't know Opera is still in business.

Let's hope they restore the Presto engine.

They could open source their older Opera 12 (presto) and Opera Mail, just before they sell the company.

Among the technologically knowledgeable Chinese people I've met Qihoo 360 Antivirus is pretty much considered malware, like if McAfee Antivirus and RealPlayer had some horribly evil child together. So this doesn't look like good news for Opera.

This is bad news. Opera runs products like Opera Mini, Opera Turbo, Opera Max, and SurfEasy VPN. Each of these products require routing data through Opera's servers. Trust is of paramount importance. And Qihoo is not a company that I trust.

Lots of negativity around this purchase but in my opinion Opera was destined to be Left in the dust of the big 3. I think this purchase guarantees at least some money flowing into competition and new ideas from a company that seems to embrace common sense web standards.

Congrats to the team and the owners.

qihoo is a nortorious company of building spyware. I will not use anything related to opera anymore.

Pay $10 to become VIP level one. It removes ads in browser. $20 for VIP II: rendering css on your page. $30 for VIP III: able to run javascript. $40 for ES5 support.

Chinese government wants the Opera proxy, great way to monitor people.

Don't do it Opera (though for 1B I can't blame them).

I decided to stick with Opera browsers & SurfEasy VPN exclusively, this move makes me question my decision.

Terrible development. Opera was hands-down the best desktop browser. Somehow less buggy and more userfriendly than Chrome. Handles tons of tabs without problems, fast snappy and even with support for vertical tabs.

This is no good! I am not using Opera as my main browser, but I do use it to test my webapps. Is there a way to disable auto-update from now on, surely, safely, and cleanly? My last version is going to be 35.