
Norway's Opera warns on growth, says firm may be sold - ytch
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/08/opera-software-ma-idUSL5N10J09C20150808
======
Aqwis
This is really too bad -- Norway has a severe lack of software product
companies. Most graduates end up in one of the country's many consulting
outfits, both due to the lack of positions in product companies and because
those that do exist offer worse opportunities for career development than the
consulting companies do.

~~~
sverredanger
Last year Schibsted hired ex-Googler Rian Liebenberg as CTO and started
bringing in people from Yahoo, Twitter, Amazon, Google, Spotify and even
Qt/Nokia. apparently there are opportunities for career development even in
Norway. Watch this space.

~~~
toredash
They outsourced operations to IBM, is that a good sign?

~~~
sverredanger
Schibsted is huge and consists of a lot of companies running their own stack.
I am not surprised to see some of that operated by IBM.

It is a good sign if it enables Schibsted to focus on becoming more like a
Technology company. It is too early to tell of course.

Full disclosure: I am one of those ex-Googlers recently hired by Schibsted,
and I am not working with IBM. I believe that what is happening is the most
interesting thing happening in tech in Norway at the moment. Far better
opportunity than the consulting companies Aqwis referred to.

~~~
toredash
I've always viewed Schibsted as a owner of media companies, VG, Blokket etc.
Not a company that is producing software. That at least how I read your views.
From the little I've viewed they don't do anything special on IT operations,
quite boring. So it might make sense, and what I've heard is that the quality
of the operations (at least in Norway) haven't been to good.

Random ramblings ends here <-

------
jmspring
Opera bought a company that I felt was the most challenging and least
rewarding (I left 3 weeks befor vesting despite employee number sub 20). Glad
for those that stayed and what opera bought was a very focused version of what
we started with.

------
celticfighter
Happens if you betray Power Users and move forward to an almost non
customizable Chrome clone.

That should be a warning for Mozilla too, fool the users once and they fall
for it, fool them twice and they fall again but try to fool them 1001 times
and they give you the middle finger!

------
ontoillogical
> * 2015 revenue now forecast lower at $600 mln to $618 mln

How does Opera generate revenue? Ads?

~~~
lesdeuxmagots
Opera went on an acquisition spree over the last few years to buy and stitch
together what is now the largest independent mobile ad network. Pretty much
went from nothing 2 years ago to the vast majority of their revenues this
year.

Which is to say the Opera most people think about, the browser, isn't where
the money is being made. In fact, Opera MediaWorks, their mobile ad network,
isn't really connected to the browser in any way, and the business is
structured as a nearly separate entity.

~~~
gcb0
that was the shift they did when they gave up browsers (i.e. become chromium
skin makers).

it was a crazy shift. they always made some money with ads. so they decided to
cut the middle man, but they forgot a) they didn't have the eyeballs anymore,
b) they know nothing about being a network. yeah they bought companies, but
probably the clients didn't stick around otherwise people here would at least
have heard they are a publisher now.

~~~
progers7
Opera is far from a "chromium skin maker". In addition to features like
autosizing modes for mobile, Opera developers are heavily involved in specs as
well as the entire Chromium stack:

[https://blink.lc/blink/log/?qt=author&q=opera](https://blink.lc/blink/log/?qt=author&q=opera)

[https://blink.lc/chromium/log/?qt=author&q=opera](https://blink.lc/chromium/log/?qt=author&q=opera)

They have an incredible team.

~~~
neverminder
It's a little ironic for such news to end up here, because I'm pretty sure
Opera (mobile) is the only one of the major browsers still supporting text
reflow, which is why I use it for reading HN which doesn't have an official
mobile site version.

~~~
Bromlife
I too use Opera Mobile for its text reflow feature. A feature sorely lacking
in (AFAIK) every single other mobile browser.

~~~
pcwalton
Firefox has text reflow on zoom.

~~~
unicornporn
But it isn't even comparable. I've tried switching to Firefox, but the text
reflow sucks badly.

------
princetontiger
Who do you guys think purchases Opera?

Facebook? Google? Microsoft? Nokia?

~~~
Yhippa
Yahoo!

~~~
joshmn
What implications, if any, would this have on their relationship with Mozilla?

------
taivare
Opera is no longer working well on my old PC with windows 10 Speed Dial wont
even load.

------
nickpsecurity
Kind of makes all the job positions seem less appealing, eh?

[http://www.operasoftware.com/company/jobs/list](http://www.operasoftware.com/company/jobs/list)

------
nickpsecurity
I remember people told me Opera was dead years ago. Strange all the adjectives
people use for companies pulling $600+mil/yr these days... ;)

Good to see one of my old favorites making it so well so long in a cut-throat
business. Unsurprising that it might come to an end soon. I know they used to
brag on their strong and interesting approach to diversity. Wonder how much
that ended up helping them innovate into survival where others failed.

~~~
Mithaldu
Opera the _browser company_ is dead.

Their management decided they don't want to make browsers anymore, replaced
the presto development team with a chromium modding team, and focussed on
selling ads.

In the financial report 1Q15 you can see that out of 127 mio revenue, only
17.1 mio come from browsers:
[http://www.operasoftware.com/company/investors/finance](http://www.operasoftware.com/company/investors/finance)

If they're still one of your favourites, then i guess you like ads a lot?

~~~
ago
I agree that Opera the browser is not as competitive as they once were, but
for the ads point you could say the same about Chrome since Google makes its
money from advertising, not from the browser. I haven't seen any ads outside
of the web content in Chrome or Opera (at least since version 8.5).

~~~
nickpsecurity
Good counter. It's pretty much all ads these days with browsers being a
delivery mechanism.

