Ask Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner 254
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.
Competing vs Free Open Source Product (Score:5, Interesting)
What can we look forward to? (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Most promising platform for the company? (Score:3, Interesting)
Marketgrowth? (Score:4, Interesting)
What are Opera's goals for 2006 (Score:2, Interesting)
Thanks for your time,
Bob_Villa
Re:Competing vs Free Open Source Product (Score:5, Interesting)
Would you sell to Microsoft? (Score:5, Interesting)
--LWM
Feature thieves! (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Integration vs Modularity (Score:1, Interesting)
AdBlock (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
why not team up with google (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
One critical thing missing from Opera... (Score:5, Interesting)
Will Opera ever go Open Source? (Score:4, Interesting)
Dealing With Idiots? (Score:2, Interesting)
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 than their ping times? Is market share even a goal to Opera, or would it just be icing on the cake?
Firefox vs Opera (Score:3, Interesting)
Picking one browser over another (Score:5, Interesting)
Personal favourite ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Web developers and Opera "testing" (Score:4, Interesting)
What level of market share would you say is required by Opera for web developers to ensure their layouts render correctly ?
Re:Competing vs Free Open Source Product (Score:2, Interesting)
Opera Mini just rocks.
What kind of widgets will be included in Opera 9? (Score:2, Interesting)
Future of free version? (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Ebrary: why we don't use Opera in the library (Score:2, Interesting)
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, it is just that the higher ups have payed thousands of dollars for these databases; some of them are very good databases and contain information important to our library users, but many of them are only designed to work with IE.
Is there any business case for making Opera compatible with all the little twiddles of IE, so that it could work for certain segments of the internet population? Such as, for example, databases of the type that are used in libraries?
How to maintain profitablity? (Score:3, Interesting)
Bug tracking, developer tools and HTML/CSS/JS (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
Does Opera have any plans to improve the cookie managing ability of its browser?
Caching (Score:1, Interesting)
What is a realistic price tag for Opera? (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
What's the deal with NTLM support? (Score:2, Interesting)
Mac Market? (Score:3, Interesting)