January 02, 2006

Hey VS.NET Team : Nevermind...

Understanding XML: A (Liquid) Crystal Ball Workout

Microsoft will buy Opera.

OK, we've all heard the rumors, and the denial of the rumors from Opera. The denial seemed pretty matter of fact, so theres no reason to believe it was a smoke screen of some sort.

But Microsoft....

Scratch the OSS VS.NET request. Make this work somehow and I WILL give you the foot rubs and back massages!

Oh, but don't actually absorb them, let them continue as is... No need for it to replace IE either. Let IE be IE and Opera be Opera. But instead of stressing over the making the Trident engine do web standards that were never designed as part of the base architecture, instead let IE be the focus of the .NET/XAML world and let Opera take over as the Web Standards focused browsers.

Actually, better yet...

Maybe just an investment/distribution agreement would be better than buying them outright (if that would even be possible). I would bet an outright purchase would send chills through the Opera community and send current corporate customers looking elsewhere for embedded browser technologies etc... (although thats pure speculation) where as an investment/distribution agreement for the Windows-platform only would allow the possibility of an exclusive agreement for just the Windows-platform and not put you into a position where you're either forced to distribute/develop/support the Linux version, or kill it and cause even more industry fall-out in regards to trust issues.

[UPDATE: Even if you did by them, as long as you don't kill the Linux-browser, then nothing bad could become of this. Then again... how many Linux users use the Opera browser? So maybe you could kill it and it wouldn't be a problem as my best guess suggests that the Linux communities care most about Mozilla-based browsers anyway and wouldn't be all that concerned if they suddenly lost Opera because of a buy-out.]

In all seriousness, I can't see why this would be a bad thing for ANYBODY and a REALLY GOOD thing for Windows users. Opera already provides all the support that you more than likely will never provide (SVG, XHTML, future CSS standards) and with a few simple tweaks (like integrated support for MSXML :D:D:D) coupled with direct MS support, suddenly your users have a fast-as-hell, complete web standards compliant browser and you can now focus the IE team on keeping in sync with the Vista-focused technologies, providing support for XP (like you are already doing) and because of it IE becomes a better, faster, and more reliable browser for Avalon/Indigo technologies. Hell, you could even get really creative and integrate the engines into one tabbed-enhanced browser interface that would switch automatically depending the type of document that was being rendered.

Again, it easy for me... I have nothing to lose. But oh my dear goodness would this be a Kick-A$$ way to solve a whole helluva lot of problems...

Just promise me you'll think about it K.

Gracias Amigo(s) :D