Opera a Chinese Browser?

[nlatin]

Haven't been in that camp for a while, but seen today that Qihoo and Kunlun bought Opera Browser. Now, what are the implications of that purchase? What's your verdict on the sale?

Thanks

[luetage]

@nlatin What I heard (back when it happened) is that the browser part (desktop/mobile) of the company was bought by Chinese investors, after a public share offer failed. Other parts of the company (tv/advertising/games) have nothing to do with this. Therefore you might as well say the Opera browser is Chinese.

Although the company promised that not much would change, the Norwegian development team seems to have been completely disbanded. You got mostly Polish (or more broad: Eastern Europe) devs and community managers now, as is apparent if you follow the blog posts. How much the shareholders influence the development is hard to tell.

[sgunhouse]

Opera is still formally Norwegian, though the gifts the send us forum mods all come for Poland, and one even described the browser as "made in Wroclaw" (a city in Poland). There were posts about the Chinese thing at the time, but I forget the details except that they assured us it wasn't the desktop or mobile browser.

[luetage]

@sgunhouse said in Opera a Chinese Browser?:

There were posts about the Chinese thing at the time, but I forget the details except that they assured us it wasn't the desktop or mobile browser.

@sgunhouse The Chinese bought the desktop and mobile Opera browser and nothing else. That "they" assured the community of something doesn't mean all too much, when it's very easy to find out what really happened.