Opera dismisses Google takeover talk as rumor

IDG News Service - Opera Software ASA has not been approached by Google Inc. about a possible acquisition, an Opera spokesman said today, dismissing rumors that Google is eyeing a takeover of the Norwegian browser company.

"These are just rumors. We have not been approached," said Tor Odland, communications director at Opera.

The rumors appear to have stemmed from a blog posting Tuesday by Pierre Chappaz, a former head of Yahoo Inc.'s European operations. "According to a source who is usually well informed, Google is close to acquiring the Opera browser," he wrote in his blog in French.

Officials at Mountain View, Calif.-based Google were not immediately available for comment. A spokesman for the company's public relations agency in Europe had no comment.

One analyst said buying Opera would make sense for Google, particularly given its expansion beyond search and its apparent ambition to offer productivity applications over the Web as a service.

Google announced a partnership with Sun Microsystems Inc. in October, part of which included finding ways to expand the distribution of OpenOffice.org, the open-source productivity suite on which Sun StarOffice is built. The companies offered few details, but some analysts saw it as a move toward Google offering hosted applications.

"Having a browser would make it easier to do the software-on-demand type of proposition they are getting into with Sun and OpenOffice.org," said Mike Davis, a senior research analyst at U.K.-based Butler Group. "From a pure design point of view, you want to have control over not just the back-end systems, but the whole delivery process to the end user."

Google could also optimize its own browser for even faster Web searches, he said. "It would be able to produce something very fast and slick and accessible," Davis said.

Google will inevitably have its own browser eventually, according to Davis. The only question is whether it will acquire one or develop it in-house, he said.

The company has already been rumored to be developing its own browser, he noted. "Buying an established one that already has a presence and a level of respect would be a sensible thing to do if it wants to continue its expansion outside search," Davis said.

Another analyst called the discussion a good rumor that's sure to "keep the perceived Google-Microsoft rivalry ratcheted up another notch."

"Whilst it may be difficult for Google to make any direct income from acquiring a browser, there might be the advantage that the company could package a browser preconfigured with Google goodies that it could then attempt to get PC