Google + Opera?

There is a rumor going around that Google is planning to acquire Opera Software ASA, the company who developed Opera Browser.

Gary Price said:

Dirson's New Google Blog links to a French language blog by Pierre Chappaz (former president of Yahoo! Europe), says that the acquisition is going down but to use the terms given in Google's mechanical translation of the post, this info needs to be "taken with precaution."

I agree that this rumor need to be "taken with precaution", but this is a very nice rumor. It made me think what would be like if Google actually acquired Opera.

I believe if Google acquired Opera, there is a good chance that Google will open Opera's source to the public. It would greatly reduces Internet Explorer's marketshare while creating fair number of good internet browsers. That way, no single browser will dominate the browsers market; thus, creating a heathly competition among browsers. Frankly, I don't believe in "size-fit-all" browser, because there is no such thing.

There are some other speculation that Google will rebrand Opera as "GBrowser" and use knowledge of both Firefox developers and Opera developers to improve it. Not a bad speculation but unlikely since there is no need for Google to make "GBrowser" if Google already got their men and women working on Mozilla Firefox.

Another speculation is Google will take Opera out of the market and move all Opera developers over to Firefox team. Well, after laughing on the floor for a while, I would say "fat chance." There is no good reason for Google to take Opera out of the market because taking out Opera will not help the competition in the browsers market.

I hope this is more than just a rumor because I am pretty excited to see what Google would do with Opera. I think it is a great idea for Google to acquire Opera. Google is a good company and Opera is a good internet browser. They would make a good couple.