Introducing Opera Software
Opera Software AS is based in Oslo, Norway. The Opera browser was developed in 1994 by a team of
researchers working for the Norwegian Telecommunication company, Telenor.
The team, including the two founders of Opera Software, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy,
had the vision to create an Internet and multimedia client that can be used by all computer users,
including those with older machines and those with physical disabilities. They felt that existing browsers
were not suitable for these markets, and set out to address these and the problems of the Internet.
Amongst them were:
- The speed at which the program starts and retrieves information from the World Wide Web
- The size of the program, both installation and executable
- The resource requirements, using less RAM and CPU overhead
- The user-friendliness (easy navigation and customization)
Many months later, the most amazing software product in its category was born - from scratch and
without using any common outside libraries.
The two founders made the advanced browser run fast on both modest and advanced machines, and included
features to accommodate disabled users, too, making Opera the first browser to offer these special features.
The first versions were only used within Telenor as an internal information system on their Intranet.
Telenor did not see themselves as Internet software developers or publishers, so at the end of 1995 Jon
and Geir left Telenor, with the legal rights to the software they had developed. This marked the founding
of Opera Software AS.
In the third quarter of 1996 Opera 2.1 was made available on the Internet as a 90 day shareware version.
From then on the number of loyal and excited users has been on a steady rise, winning over users of
competitive products often within minutes of their first encounter with Opera, but the program remained a
niche product up until December of 1997, when Opera 3.0 was released. This was a smashing success and
following versions have won Opera many devoted followers, high acclaim and praise in the international
press as well as a substantial number of awards the world over. This, our current version, is in our view
the best of them to date, and we hope to bring you many hours of satisfaction and joy using Opera 4.0.
As a final word, we would like to thank you for trying Opera and above that all those who are actively
supporting us by spreading the news and more so by registering their copy of Opera.