With the launch of the Chrome, the browser market has heated up to levels never seen before. While fans may proclaim that the Opera browser is the best out there, it has never actually managed to match up to the charisma of Firefox, nor has it ever matched and the hype that was built around Chrome. Amidst all, Opera had been lying dormant for quite some time. Not any longer. With Opera 9.6 up for grabs today, the company is set to unleash its best and meanest offering for desktop the browser segment -- and this time, there is an Indian context to it as well. But more about that later.

For Opera fans out there, you might have always wondered about the people behind the making of their favorite browser. Well, we had a chance to catch up with none other than the CEO of Opera Software, Jon S. von Tetzchner who was accompanied by Sagar Chandna, who heads the India division of Opera Software -- being the Country manager for India. Mr, Tetzchner had some interesting opinions to share with us. We talked about everything Opera. From the Wii to Opera Mini, almost everything was covered. Here are some of the questions we posed to him; with his responses.

1. Opera's game plan seems to be: ideate and iterate product on the desktop, port it and sell it for mobile and console devices. Why this particular route?

We think 'Web as one. If a user views a particular website on his desktop, he may also want to view it on his mobile phone or any other device. The same interface means a user is already acquainted with the interface and sometimes it works in our favour. If a user first tries out Opera Mini, he might as well try Opera Desktop or vice-versa

Opera happens to be the oldest browsing company in the world -- we started off with Unix and later went Windows. Since 1999, we have been doing devices -- starting off with a Psion handheld and as we see it, there is only one Internet. You can access the Internet from your PC, your mobile, your gaming console and so on... We believe that in order to have a good mobile browser it needs to be built on a desktop browser, if you try to build [a mobile browser] from scratch, it will only be a 'mobile browser', with limited capabilities. But again, we build both from the same code -- which also means that Opera on the PC can easily to run on old hardware. That's because the phones of today have roughly the same computing prowess of an yesteryear computer.


2. Will Opera ever go open-source? Why not?

Going Open Source is not a priority at the moment. While it has worked for some and did not for others, what we believe in are Open Standards rather than open source. Open Source is fine, we have nothing against it but it won't be advisable to have once piece of code, or software ruling the world. As for the obvious success of Firefox, it is pertinent to note that, prior to Firefox, it was Netscape which went Open Source -- and Netscape is gone! So it is not just Open Source or the extensions. At the end of the day, it was a choice. If everyone was using Firefox, that would leave us very little innovation. In a way, what creates innovation is multiple companies that are trying to compete for providing the best browser and a part of that is extensions. It could also be other features -- sessions, fit-to-width, mouse gestures and so on. Innovation is also about "copying" ideas and innovating upon them to create an overall better product.


3. Will we ever see Opera on the iPhone? Why not?

That would need Apple to change their policy of not allowing competing software applications on the iPhone.


4. How does it feel when a Firefox or a Chrome takes the PR/media buzz for features that you have been offering for years?

It would be interesting to note that after the immediate release of the Chrome, Opera downloads increased by as much as 20%. Even in the past, just about the time of a new competitive product launch, we have always seen a surge in the file download numbers. This, owing to the fact that people actually came to know from web sites and blogs about the new features existing in the Chrome to have existed much earlier with Opera. Just that would be enough for users to come flocking to the Opera downloads site. As long as their marketing tends to give us a nice impact, we're happy about the going ons.


5. Do you see your competitors as a threat?

Well, any competition you should potentially seen as a threat. However, every time there has been a competitor coming in to the market, we have seen an increase in our user base! Partially because people are writing more about browsers.


6. Speaking of user base, what is Opera's market share for mobile phones?

On the desktop front, we have around 25 to 30 million active users. For the mobile platform we have the most used mobile browser in the Opera Mini and probably Opera Mobile browser at number 2.


7. Let's come to the Nintendo Wii, can you tell us which channels, apart from the Internet Channel are powered by Opera?

That's in a way a question that Nintendo would be able to answer. We're doing a fair amount of work on the Wii -- but, Nintendo would have to comment on that in particular -- and at the moment they would not like us to comment on this. Widgets are a part of our current solution on the Wii. The Internet channel supports Opera widgets.


8. The Nintendo DSi has Opera embedded. The DS Lite had Opera as a separate cart which came with additional RAM. Does that mean that the DSi has more RAM than the DS Lite?

Yes, the DSi has more RAM than the DS Lite. In addition, with integrated Opera coming with the DSi, it will use RAM more efficiently.


9. How has the experience been, working with Nintendo? Who approached whom in this relationship first?

Working with Nintendo was fun. They are a company that emphasizes on simplicity and is very user-centric. We wanted to have good features which the Wii users could benefit of. The final outcome was pleasing to both of us and they were the ones who took the first step in approaching us. We are happy the way it has turned out to be. For us working with them was a very good experience.


10. What can you tell us about NVIDIA's Tegra platform? When can we expect a device using Tegra?

We definitely cannot comment on the launch of Tegra-powered devices but expect it in 2009. NVIDIA Tegra is a powerful platform which has pre-bundled Opera 9.5. We have integrated the browser nicely to make it benefit from Tegra s powerful features. The initial impressions are of a truly powerful platform that we may soon see implemented on high end mobile phones of the near future -- moving on to "normal" phones in a few years' time.


11. Is Javascript rendering of Opera comparable to Chrome?

For the time being, no. Chrome can handle large javascripts more efficiently than Opera. But we were the first ones to start working on the javascript rendering engine and are making significant improvements. However, we are not sure when the engine will be ready to be integrated in Opera.


12. How do you distinguish your mobile browser with others in the market, Skyfire for example?

Opera Mini and Opera Mobile are optimized for users who have a limited amount of bandwidth to play with. Opera optimizes the webpage to be viewable even in a low-bandwidth environment, thus loading it faster. Skyfire on the other hand is designed for high bandwidth connections for people with unlimited data plans. Opera Mini however apart from being optimized for slower connections, performs equally well when there is enough bandwidth available.



13. What is the future of web, according to Opera, and what steps are you taking to get there?

People are spending more time online than ever before. Probably, it has even become a phenomenon more common than say, watching television. Additionally, what we have noticed is that there is not a lot of applications that a lot of people use 'outside the browser'. If you ask 1000 people what applications you run simultaneously, maybe only 5% will answer that they run more than 5 applications at a time with only a couple of them being online applications. Most of the time is usually spent on the browser. What this is changing is that if you want to make an application today, instead of writing it natively, you will write it using web standards and it will run on Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile phones -- even on a TV or a console. This is gradually changing the way we work

With web standards getting richer, the focus has shifted to web-applications. This includes local file access -- the server being able to connect to you. The server which so far had been a missing link. Earlier you'd always have to connect to a server and if the server was uncontactable, you'd be facing big problems -- in the near future you'd have local file access as well, which makes applications easier to develop for. We are also seeing richer graphics. You can actually make DOOM-like games in the browser and we have demoes of that! With all the new capabilities the browser of today is getting, you're able to do a lot more now. Browsers are getting more important. Actually, operating systems are getting to be less important. It doesn't mean that operating systems don't matter -- just that it's now easier.


14. What's your take on Cloud Computing?

They're built on browsers in the first place. Without browsers, there is no cloud computing.




That was about the brief QnA session we had. We thank Jon S. von Tetzchner and Sagar Chandna for their time. Post this, the discussion moved on to multiple topics and to Opera's India-centric plans as well.

Opera seems to be pretty excited about the prospects they see in India. With India already taking the third place, right on the heels of Russia and Indonesia, as the country with the third largest number of Opera Mini users, Opera seems to have a few things in store for us.

Apart from opening an office at Chandigarh, Opera will also double the staffing. The main India centric shift would be the news that the new Opera 9.6 will be available in three Indian languages as well. Opera is starting off with Hindi, Tamil and Telugu for now. The company is also looking to tie-up with Network operators and has actually tied up with Tata Indicom for providing devices pre-installed with Opera Mini. This is similar to the almost 30 other tie-ups Opera has worldwide.