Rumour: Facebook looking to acquire Opera
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 25th May 2012 19:09 UTC
Opera Software Pocket-lint has a rumour up that Facebook is interested in acquiring Opera to kickstart their own move into the browser market, to compete with Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft. While it would mean much-deserved recognition for Opera, I actually hope such a deal does not go through - for entirely selfish reasons.
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foldingstock
Member since:
2008-10-30

I just find it sad that a corporate buyout by a company that has nothing to do with our business could affect us so greatly. But, that's the way the business world works every day.


I don't mean for this to sound rude, but the "sad" outcome you speak of is always a possibility when you depend on any external entity to conduct business. Free services such as Opera's mobile browser are great, but should be used with caution and some kind of contingency plan in place. Personally, I expect to see a lot more of this in a few years.

Companies are increasingly pushing internal services to "the cloud" to free up their staff and save operational costs. This is great short term, but most companies aren't prepared for the possibility that their cloud service will shut down one day. Services don't even have to shut down to drastically effect business operations. Simply changing a public API or web interface layout could result in broken functionality. Ah, the cloud.

Reply Parent Score: 6

Morgan Member since:
2005-06-29

Not rude at all, I agree with you completely. I knew what I had thrown together was a kludge, and would eventually be replaced with a more robust answer. In fact, I do have a long term solution mapped out via OpenBravo's ERP offering. But it will still involve a significant hardware upgrade, something my superiors will just have to deal with when the time comes.

My point was more that, increasingly, big decisions by the major players no longer trickle downhill to the little guys. Rather, they become an avalanche of change that is difficult to deal with unless, as you said, there is a contingency plan. I have a feeling that even if we had licensed a specific level of support and customization from Opera for our warehouse database project, a move like the one rumored would still impact it significantly.

Reply Parent Score: 3

foldingstock Member since:
2008-10-30

My point was more that, increasingly, big decisions by the major players no longer trickle downhill to the little guys. Rather, they become an avalanche of change that is difficult to deal with unless, as you said, there is a contingency plan.


I agree completely and feel that "the cloud" is to blame for this shift. In "the old days," if a software vendor was bought out, you could keep using the last version you purchased from them as long as you had hardware that would run it. This can't happen with a lot of modern software that depend on a cloud connection to operate (whether for licensing or computational purposes). If the company gets bought out or goes belly up, changes are good their servers that your software depend on to function will not remain online for long.

I have a feeling that even if we had licensed a specific level of support and customization from Opera for our warehouse database project, a move like the one rumored would still impact it significantly.


Very likely, yes. Most SLA's don't/can't cover a buyout since the terms of any potential buyout are unknown. If Opera was open source and provided a server package that would allow the end user to build their own server to perform computation for their mobile browser you might have a chance, but this would also require purchasing hardware and probably some rather extensive software configurations. Certainly no 'one size fits all' fix.

Reply Parent Score: 5

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