Opera began as a tiny research project in 1994 and the first public version 2.0 was released in 1996. Celebrated as the “fastest browser on earth”, speed tests conducted by ZDNet had confirmed that it clearly performed better and faster than Internet Explorer. Being an opens source application it runs on a variety operating systems including Mac OS X, Linux, MS Windows, Solaris and FreeBSD. Page zooming, stronger encryption, malware-phishing protection, tabbed browsing, download manager are some of its pioneering elements.
Compared to PC browser market, Opera holds a stronger grip on the mobile device markets catering to smartphones, mobile-phones, Java enabled devices, and personal digital assistants. On September 1, this week, Norway based Opera group released the Opera 10 update. Opera 10 has an inbuilt page compression and a done-up tab bar that automatically displays thumbnails on desktop for open pages.

Investors and users world over know the significance and success of Skype in the global telecommunication field. Founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, it was touted as Europe’s most inspiring startup success stories. The online auction behemoth eBay had purchased Skype at a mighty $3.3 billion in the year 2005. However, it had ignored getting rights to a critical supporting software for Skype owned by a firm named Joltid. This firm also owned by Skype founders had filed litigation against eBay in an effort to get back Skype.

eBay on the other hand had plans for bringing an IPO for Skype which got a hit owing to lawsuit by founders of Skype. Moreover, John Donahoe, CEO of eBay had also admitted that the VoIP unit didn’t mean any real synergy with mega auction house’s business direction. He announced a plan this week to divest control of Skype unit to a cluster of investors at $1.9 billion while retaining 35% equity control.