Opera sells most of its assets, including browser and name, to Chinese consortium for $600 million

Shawn Knight

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Opera Software, makers of the well-known alternative web browser Opera, has sold a selection of its business components to a Chinese consortium of technology companies.

The two sides had originally agreed to a total takeover valued at $1.24 billion although regulatory hurdles held the deal up past its initial deadline. As a fallback, the Chinese consortium has agreed to purchase Opera’s desktop and mobile browser operations, its performance and privacy apps and its technology licensing business for $600 million.

The deal also includes Opera’s 29 percent stake in Chinese joint venture nHorizon.

Opera will maintain its advertising and marketing businesses as well as its game-related apps and television operations.

As Bloomberg notes, Opera’s share value fell as much as 17 percent on news of the failed-then-revived deal. That said, the remaining company still has room for growth as it has projected sales to increase by as much as 30 percent this year.

Opera said last week that the original deal still hadn’t received government approval although it’s unclear if that meant from Chinese authorities or the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US. For what it’s worth, the deadline for approval by the Committee of Foreign Investment was last Friday.

The new deal has already been approved by Opera’s board. If successful, the remaining Opera businesses would have 18 months to come up with a new name as the Opera name and trademark was also included in the sale.

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Wow, I will definitely watch the development of this deal. I love their products, especially opera max, awesome application. How does a company go from 1.2B to half price? Just because of a shaky deal?
 
If I used Opera I'd be switching to something else around about now.
Especially since it was shown earlier that a popular Chinese made android browser was recording all of your browsing and sending it to said company. Cant trust anything that comes out of that country.

Which is too bad, it was the only browser that had both built in ad blocking AND a built in VPN.
 
Shame they sold out... I bet opera gets bundled with every Chinese smart phone tablet and laptop... ( ominous whisper) "Aand iiit wiiill beee waaatching yoooo"!
 
Especially since it was shown earlier that a popular Chinese made android browser was recording all of your browsing and sending it to said company. Cant trust anything that comes out of that country.

Which is too bad, it was the only browser that had both built in ad blocking AND a built in VPN.
All browsers record and save your browsing habits, even if you use anonymous mode. The sad thing is that you can't trust anyone thesedays and you're compelled to choose what you think is the lesser of all evils.
 
If I used Opera I'd be switching to something else around about now.
Especially since it was shown earlier that a popular Chinese made android browser was recording all of your browsing and sending it to said company. Cant trust anything that comes out of that country.

Which is too bad, it was the only browser that had both built in ad blocking AND a built in VPN.

Kettles and pots anybody?

Well, to be fair. I'd trust American manufacturing as long as it excluded tech. Software? Not a jot. The various agencies have already proved to be untrustworthy.
 
Good for them. I hope some of the folk that been hanging in for years and years made a pantload of $. I used Opera loooong ago and liked it but moved on. Recent iterations have not been for me.
 
I love Opera, it's the only browser I like, I have everything sync with my Opera account and devices. I've tried several browsers and they're all rubbish. Changing Browser after so many years doesn't seem something I'd do.
 
Bah.... I use opera in my phone and notebook.
I will remove it next week .. its probably end up like UC browser which has potential but became advertising browser.
 
As mentioned above, Vivaldi is a nice browser. It's from one of the original Opera founders- Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner. It's chromium based, so it's fast. It's also getting more feature-rich as they roll out updates every 3 months or so. It's the only browser that I feel I can finally replace my beloved Opera 12 with. It's already way more customizable (if that's a word) than most of the browsers out there, and I like avoiding the big dogs like Chrome and Firefox because I figure that like Opera, Vivaldi's user base is too small for attackers to bother with.
 
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