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Ask Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner

Posted by Roblimo on Thu Dec 29, 2005 12:15 PM
from the water-is-wide-I-cannot-get-over-it dept.
The Internet
Opera Software has gotten all kinds of media play lately, including rumors that both Google and Microsoft were buying the company. Whether you love or hate Opera, you've got to give them credit for building a decent browser and grabbing a small but noticeable market share in the face of competition from both MSIE and Firefox. Co-founder/CEO Jon von Tetzchner is obviously reponsible for at least some of this success -- and for much of the company's high press profile, due not only to the Opera Browser itself but to at least one whacky PR stunt and at least one high-profile beef with Microsoft. So who is this guy? Ask and find out. He's obviously not your typical software company CEO, so we don't expect typical CEO-type answers from him. We'll send him (direct, not through a PR person) 10 or 12 of your best questions Friday afternoon (US EST), and run his answers during the first week of 2006.
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[+] Håkon Responds to Questions About CSS and... 204 comments
You submitted questions for Håkon Wium Lie on June 20. Today we have his answers, not only to the (+5 moderated) questions we sent him, but to a bunch of others he thought would also be interesting to answer.
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Ask Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner 50 Comments More /

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  • Competing vs Free Open Source Product (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FortKnox (169099) * on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:17PM (#14358929) Homepage Journal
    I can understand how a company competes against microsoft in the browser world, but how has things changed now that Mozilla and Firefox came into the picture. How do you plan on making money when a free, open source product is directly competing with you? Not only is it a complete product, but because it is open source, it has addons for just about anything available. Seems like an impossible battle to fight...
    • Some have suggested that Microsoft should buy the Opera browser. How do you feel about this? If they did, would you plan to continue with work on the browser? Would you ever work for Microsoft?
    • While Firefox certainly does compete strongly with Opera, its popularity is not only a negative for Opera. For one, Opera is itself a high-quality product, in some ways better than the godlike Firefox. Firefox sometimes places a heavy footprint on my computer's memory; Opera's code seems more streamlined. The Opera interface has some interesting plusses, as well. Healithy competition will ensure more useful features in Opera. Also, the popularity of ANY alternative to IE is a boon for ALL alternatives,
    • Don't forget that desktop Opera is as much an advertisment for the cellphone editions of Opera as it is a stand alone browser in itself.

      Opera Mini just rocks.

    • From their financial statement: In September, Opera Software permanently removed the ad banner and licensing fee from its desktop Web browser. This was made possible by a gradual increase in revenue from search and service partners, including a new, revised search agreement with Google

  • How do you live with yourself? (Score:5, Funny)

    by WinDoze (52234) on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:17PM (#14358930) Homepage
    As the CEO of Opera, do you have any idea how many inncent men you've put through a night of HELL as we patiently sit through the damn thing in order to get into some chick's pants? OH, sorry. Wrong Opera. (Please don't really send this to him...)

  • What can we look forward to? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by robyannetta (820243) * on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:18PM (#14358932) Homepage
    I've been pimping Firefox since version 0.7 but have recently moved to Opera because Firefox doesn't natively support some things that Opera does:

    local.google.com
    Native user agent switching
    Opera 9's upcoming Acid2 compatibilty
    Eye candy and general coolness factors

    Can you give us a taste of new, unannounced features we'll see in future versions?

  • Monopoly end? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lifewish (724999) on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:18PM (#14358935) Homepage Journal
    Does he think that the advent of Firefox et al signals an end to Microsoft dominance of the browser market? If so, does he think this will be good or bad for Opera as a company?

  • Most promising platform for the company? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brokencomputer (695672) * on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:18PM (#14358940) Homepage Journal
    What is your favorite development platform? Your most promising browser platforms seem to be mobile. What do you plan to do in the future in terms of supporting more platforms (mobile, or other)?

  • Marketgrowth? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sheridan3003 (165213) on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:22PM (#14358973) Homepage Journal
    Do you find that the majority of Opera users are on the IT side of things, and if so how do you plan to get more users who are the "typical user", or only use their computer at work for their assigned tasks? Since IE is embedded when they get their new machine out of the box, how are you introducing Opera to users that probably have a limited understanding that they can have a different browser, or even more than one browser on their machine?

  • What do you see happening with your browser in 2006? Are there any exciting new features coming, or are you trying to get your browser bundled with any major PC company (ex: Dell with FireFox in the UK)? Give us a good reason to use Opera in the coming year.

    Thanks for your time,
    Bob_Villa

  • Would you sell to Microsoft? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lilmouse (310335) on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:25PM (#14359001)
    Recently someone suggested that MS should simply buy Opera as a web browser for Vista. What do you think of that idea? Would you sell?

    --LWM

  • Feature thieves! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tehshen (794722) <tehshen@gmail.com> on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:26PM (#14359005)
    Opera has been an innovative browser for some time; it was one of the first to offer popup blocking, tabs (or MDI of some description), sessions, mouse gestures, and so on. However, since then, other browsers have implemented them as well; Firefox has extensions offering mouse gestures and sessions, and popup blocking and tabs are now commonplace.

    After offering so many features, would you prefer browsers such as Firefox and IE to come up with their own ideas instead of taking them from other browsers, or prefer the sharing of ideas so the web is better off overall?
    • I think Opera's corporate vision [opera.com] statement answers this pretty well, particularly:

      We believe in a patent-free Web. Opera Software does not believe innovation in the software industry is protected or encouraged by software patents. In particular, we believe interoperability on the Internet should be encouraged, and we actively work to ensure that software patents do not stand in the way of interoperability.

  • AdBlock (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EverStoned (620906) on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:28PM (#14359026) Homepage
    I'm one of the few people who switched from Opera to Firefox. The reason was AdBlock. Why doesn't Opera have a rightclick-blockad feature? Is this simply just a case of the absence of a feature, or rather an expression of your company's policy on internet advertising?
    • You can block ads in Opera using the filter.ini file. Just put in URLs, wildcards allowed, and tada! No more ads. Not as elegant as Firefox AdBlock, but it works much the same.

  • Ad block? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skyshock21 (764958) on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:28PM (#14359029)
    I've read that the position of Opera was that since it was a commercial browser you guys didn't want to include any adblocking functionality. This is the ONE AND ONLY aspect of Opera that's keeping me from using it as my main browser. Seeing the popularity of Firefox's Ad-Block extension, and now that you're releaseing Opera as a free download, do you plan on incorporating any sort of ad (or other nuisance) blocking module natively into the browser in subsequent releases?

    • Because if this was implemented as part of the browser, many websites would block Opera outright, and with good reason.

      It is possible to do AdBlocking in Opera using URL filtering. See Opera equivalents to Firefox extensions [virtuelvis.com]. There's also a second part [virtuelvis.com]. HTH.

      • All the methods to block ads under Opera using methods like css file etc are all fudges at best.

        They need some kind of plugin/extension system akin to Firefox's Extension system and (to a much lesser extent) IE's ActiveX.
      • And then Opera would have to lie to those sites about what browser it is...functionality which it already has, IIRC, for "IE-only" sites.

        I don't see this as a big stumbling block.

        Now, Opera may not want to piss off various other companies by doing something like this, but that's a different issue entirely.

      • But they couldn't! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by billybob (18401) on Thursday December 29 2005, @02:17PM (#14359884)
        many websites would block Opera outright

        Ah, but you see, that is nearly impossible! Why? Because! Opera had the brilliant idea that by default, it would identify itself as Internet Explorer, so that sites trying to lock out non-IE browsers would be fooled. I can understand the reasoning here, but as a web developer, it is actually really frustrating. Opera can do most everything IE can, as far as I can tell, but some of its CSS is a bit wacky. Not as wacky as IE, but certainly wacky in other ways. But because of the faked User Agent by default, I can't detect Opera and include changes to CSS to make it behave properly.

        But, anyways, from the comments already, it seems built-in AdBlock is in high demand. I'd have to agree with this sentiment. If I had to choose only one extension that I couldn't live without, it would be AdBlock. Whenever I use a computer without it, I am appalled by how annoying the internet trully is.

        • Actually, Opera even when identifying itself as internet explorer still has "Opera" in the UA string.

          And no web browser blocks ads out of the box, as far as I can tell. I don't think any ever will, either - it would be tempting for a lot of large ad-supported content providers to block a browser that will never give them ad views anyway. I mean, you're running a website, and you know that anyone using Opera is sucking your bandwidth and not helping you pay for it. Why would you let them on?

  • I'm just curious to what you think would happen to your comany if you were to merge with Google. I'm guessing with Google's corporate culture, you willl still be able to innovate browser technology like you have been in the past. But the Google tag with your browser will help gain more market share, and promote people coding web pages with W3C compatibility. For the good of all concerened, Opera and Firefox need to be the dominant web browsers in the market. What do you think?

  • Google as a search partner? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by furnk (935156) on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:29PM (#14359040)
    Can you offer more information on the terms of the recently announced agreement with Google? http://today.reuters.com/business/newsArticle.aspx ?type=technology&storyID=nL29549259 [reuters.com] What exactly is a "major presence"?

    Was Google just the obvious choice because of its scope, or is there some flirting going on in the hopes of a more lasting relationship?

  • One critical thing missing from Opera... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JaguarSavages (558510) on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:30PM (#14359041)
    Better extensions/plugins. Firefox has earned great acclaim for its dynamic extension support. Extensions such as Fasterfox, Adblock, Web Developer, and many others are the sole reason people use Firefox over Opera (or any other browser). I know Opera is working to help unify the Netscape plugin API, but the upcoming version 9 doesn't appear to have anything that can match Firefox's extension capabilities. When will we see Opera support plugin/extensions as powerful as Firefox's?

  • Will Opera ever go Open Source? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PenguinBoyDave (806137) <david.davidmeyer@org> on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:33PM (#14359064)
    I like Opera...in fact, I have stopped using Firefox in favor of Opera for reasons mentioned in someone elses question. Would you ever consider going back to charging for the browser, yet making it Open Source, and offering support for the paid version?

  • I'm a bit of a Firefox evangelist, and one of the huge problems I've had is that a vast number of non-technical types don't even understand what a "web browser" is. "Firefox? Uhm, no, I already installed the Internet on my Windows."

    The problem is that these people form a large chunk of users, necessary for gaining large market share, but they don't even know that Internet Explorer is different from the Internet. What is Opera doing to get installed on the computers of people with "technology IQs" lower tha

  • Firefox vs Opera (Score:3, Interesting)

    by yuretz (934955) on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:41PM (#14359130)
    I'm a happy user of Mozilla Firefox browser on both Linux and Windows. As Opera CEO, can you give me some possible reasons why should I switch to Opera? What advantages or outstanding featues it has, compared to Firefox?

  • Picking one browser over another (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheJavaGuy (725547) on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:43PM (#14359148) Homepage
    In your mind, why have most of the people, who switched to alternative browsers, chosen Firefox over other ones such as Opera.
  • Will Opera continue to expand the inclusion of XML standards such as SVG? Will we see namespace support, SVG full, MathML, XLink, XPath, XSL -FO & T etc.?

    Of course, OpenSourcing the beast would be a dream-come-true, since I'm one of those people who prefer compiling their software themselves :-)

  • Personal favourite ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rfinnvik (16122) * on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:51PM (#14359206)
    So, theoretically.... Would you prefer Google or Microsoft ? :)

  • Web developers and Opera "testing" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bushboy (112290) <lttc@lefthandedmonkeys.org> on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:51PM (#14359211) Homepage
    I've worked in a few high profile companies in the UK who are all very serious about adhering to web standards, checking all designs in internet explorer, firefox and safari, but I've yet to encounter a company who will ensure that Opera renders page layouts correctly.

    What level of market share would you say is required by Opera for web developers to ensure their layouts render correctly ?
  • Are there any plans to provide a XUL compatibility layer so Opera can make use of Firefox extensions, XUL applications, etc?
  • I am an avid fan of Opera and it's sucked the soul out of my other browsers and even my email/news/IRC/RSS clients to the point where I use nothing else.

    However, I still have to have a seperate piece of software for IM (Trillian on Windows, GAIM on Linux). Any plans to extend the IRC support to support major IM protocols and put Trillian out of business?

  • I have seen a PCWorld article http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123615,p g,4,00.asp [pcworld.com] claiming Opera 9 will support widgets, however I am unclear on what the magazine means by this. Will they be on the desktop or will they be somewhat like Firefox's extensions? Also, to all of those claiming Opera does not have Adblocking features, try going to this page: http://nontroppo.org/wiki/BlockAdvertisements [nontroppo.org] I suggest using OperaAdFilter (http://www.operaadfilter.com/ [operaadfilter.com]) for the most integration with the br

  • Future of free version? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by simetra (155655) on Thursday December 29 2005, @12:59PM (#14359287) Homepage Journal
    Hi
    I love Opera and bought it... several years ago, then a recent upgrade. THEN, you made it free!!!


    So, that makes me think, maybe you made the PC version free, and are going to concentrate on the mobile versions, which you probably really make money on. Does this mean that the free PC version will stagnate? Or will future versions be built, with fun new features?


    Also... how about a new logo? Or maybe a cross-marketing deal with Oprah?


    Thanks!

  • Two questions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Psx29 (538840) on Thursday December 29 2005, @01:06PM (#14359344)
    Which web browser(s) do you use and why? and Are there any plans to release the sourcecode now that it's gone 100% free?

  • Ebrary: why we don't use Opera in the library (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Dear Sir,

    I work in a college library. Libraries have a lot of 'online databases' they subscribe to now days; typically several dozen. One week I got bored and tested various browsers against all of our databases that we pay for, and a few that are free.

    Opera was not working very well with some of them. And there are certain ones, such as Ebrary's collection of e-books, which use Active-X plugin thingies, that wouldn't work at all.

    Thus, we cannot use Opera in the library. It is not that it is a bad browser,

  • How to maintain profitablity? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Belisarivs (526071) on Thursday December 29 2005, @01:32PM (#14359551)
    Currently, common wisdom says that Opera is being kept profitable by it's market-share in the mobile market. It's probably safe to say, however, that in the future other browsers will try to eat into that market share. Are you planning on trying to stay ahead of the curve and depend on the mobile market for profits, or do you have other markets your trying to make profits in?

  • Bug tracking, developer tools and HTML/CSS/JS (Score:4, Interesting)

    by smurfsurf (892933) on Thursday December 29 2005, @01:34PM (#14359568)
    1. Opera Bug Tracking System

    My experience with Opera's bug tracking system are rather frustrating. I can not check if some bug is already known ( describing a bug and creating a test case is time consuming). Also, I reported some things and never ever got any feedback besides an automatic email. I do not know if Opera considers it a bug, if it is not a bug but an error on my side, if someone works on it, if it was fixed, simply nothing comes back. The Opera BTS is a black hole, and since some time now, I do not feel like making the effort to report bugs.

    Do you plan to open up the BTS or at least allow the submitter to view the ticket? Or enhance the feedback?

    2. Developer Tools

    How about a DOM Inspector (and a Javascript Debugger)? Firefox's DOM Inspector and XMLHttpRequest Monitor are dearly missing in Opera.

    3. HTML/CSS/JS

    Any word on opacity support? On a Richtext Editing component?

  • When will cookie managament be imporved? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by QuietLagoon (813062) on Thursday December 29 2005, @02:10PM (#14359838)
    Opera bills itself as The most full-featured Internet power tool on the market [opera.com], yet the cookie management ability of Opera is rather simplistic when compared to other modern browsers.

    Does Opera have any plans to improve the cookie managing ability of its browser?

  • What is a realistic price tag for Opera? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The Lynxpro (657990) <lynxpro@gmai l . c om> on Thursday December 29 2005, @02:46PM (#14360073)

    Dear Mr. von Tetzchner:

    With all the rumors as-of-late about Opera being acquired by Google or Microsoft, I'd like to ask you the question of what you would consider a realistic price tag for Opera would be?

    Many of us non-IE web browsing enthusiasts would like to see the best features and code of both Opera and Firefox put together into a single open source offering. A sale to Google could make this a possibility, depending upon how restrictive the pre-existing licensing agreements your company has with various mobile phone manufacturers (which you probably cannot discuss legally).

    So, with that having been said, what's your price and would you remain aboard such a project post-sale if given such room in a contract?

       

  • Norwegian babes (Score:5, Funny)

    by HonkyLips (654494) on Thursday December 29 2005, @03:19PM (#14360267)
    From previous Opera related posts on Slashdot, it has come to my attention that you have some real babes working for you in Norway.
    Are any of them single and if so, would they be interested in dating a guy who reads slashdot? BTW I use Safari but I can be persuaded to switch...

  • Mac Market? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JoshWurzel (320371) on Thursday December 29 2005, @04:58PM (#14360889) Homepage
    Most browsers on the mac fall into one of two categories: supported by a mega-corp (Safari, Internet Explorer) or backed by the Mozilla engine (Mozilla, Camino, Firefox). What is Opera's market share when considering only the mac platform? What advantages do you think your product offers over Omniweb, for example, which is another browser that does not fall into either of the two categories mentioned? Do you have significant development effort put into your mac product to help meet or beat the market share of one of the dominant mac browsers? Or are you mostly "maintenance" on that platform?

  • competition from KHTML/WebCore (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Illissius (694708) on Thursday December 29 2005, @05:37PM (#14361098)
    One of Opera's many strengths is it's excellent rendering engine, Presto, which is light, fast, and standards compliant. To this point, is has held an edge over the competition -- over just about everything in terms of speed, over IE in standards compliance, and over Gecko in a clean and agile codebase (admittedly I haven't seen either, but judging from results and what I've heard).

    However, it now has some significant competition from KHTML/WebCore, which enjoys both corporate backing from Apple (and to a lesser degree Nokia), and the support of the open source community. It too has a clean and flexible codebase (this was the reason Apple chose it for Safari instead of Gecko, in the first place), it has a degree of standards compliance comparable to Opera's, and with Safari 2, it's also the only browser to seriously challenge Opera in terms of speed [howtocreate.co.uk]. There has also been movement (by Nokia) to adapt it to the mobile market, which is, if memory serves, Opera's main source of income currently.

    What do you think of KHTML/WebCore? Do you see it as a threat to Opera's position in the desktop and/or mobile markets? If so, how do you plan to stay ahead of it?

  • Opera / SSH UMD for Sony PSP ? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Hobart (32767) on Thursday December 29 2005, @10:31PM (#14362434) Homepage Journal
    Jon,
    It's been mentioned in the Opera forums [nyud.net] that if there were sufficient interest, Opera might look into doing a browser for the PSP. I would be delighted to plunk down $30 for an Opera + OpenSSH for the PSP on UMD that would play on older PSP firmware. How many users will make it worth your while?
    • The UA.ini featuers (and upcoming site specific features) can be "push" updated in 8.0 and up. That will fake out problem sites. Moreso, browser.js allows Opera ASA to rewrite javascript on problem pages and "push" that as well in updates. That's why the Help -> Report a site problem is useful, and important.

      You can also edit Userjs yourself, and UA.ini.

      If you want to go beyond js editing in Opera, there is always the venerable and still most powerful proxomitron if you're on windows.

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