Opera fires up new browser as engine of change - CNET

A decade ago, efforts by Firefox, Opera and Apple propelled browsers from slow-moving, unexciting technology to the foundation for all the hot new ideas in tech, everything from Google Maps to Facebook social networking. But the mobile revolution, built on Google's Android and Apple's iOS software, has stolen a lot of the attention of developers and companies building new services and tools. The popular Uber service, for instance, lets you hail a car only through its phone app. But if Opera succeeds in injecting new life into the browser, you could be spending a lot of your life in your browser again.

Opera Chief Technology Officer Håkon Wium Lie, who leads the project, won't reveal the name of the project. Boilesen has his own idea for a name, but its prospects look dim. "I call it Opera Smart, but he didn't like it," Boilesen said, laughing. Lie said there are already too many projects and products called "smart."

The vast majority of people stick with the big names in the browser world: Google Chrome, Microsoft Inteet Explorer, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox. That's been bad news for Opera, which accounts for 0.64 percent of browsing usage right now, according to Net Applications' NetMarketShare figures.

But a new crop of challengers think they can win you over -- or in Opera's case, perhaps, win you back.

Those challengers include Brave, from Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich; Vivaldi, from former Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner; Yandex Browser, from Google's biggest competitor in Russia; and UCweb, a mobile browser that Chinese Inteet power Alibaba acquired. Even Microsoft is in the game, trying to move IE users to its new Edge browser.

Opera shareholders, who hold ultimate sway over the company, haven't been happy with Opera's direction. In 2015, the board of directors began looking for a buyer, and in February, they accepted an offer of about $1.2 billion from a Chinese consortium including Inteet companies Qihoo 360 and Kunlun. The deal requires shareholder and Chinese govement approval, and so far about 35 percent of shareholder votes are in favor, according to Boilesen. He and other executives don't actually have a say: "Management do not have many shares," he said.