…for years and years, and I think it's been a huge cost to the Western world with all these Web designers having to deal with bugs in IE 6.
They had to work long hours to make sure it renders in all versions of IE and also with the standards-centred browsers such as Firefox and Safari and Opera. It would have cost Microsoft only a tiny amount of development resources in 2001 and 2002, but they left the problems linger.
Opera's made no bones of the fact that you'd like to take market share from Microsoft. That's a pretty ambitious goal. Are you making any progress?
We've been able to retain a 1 percent share across the whole world. In some markets, it's much higher. For example, in Australia it's 5 percent, and in Russia it's 10 percent. So you know, if I can challenge America here, like in the space race in the 1950s: Russia is ahead of you, and you need to catch up! (Laughing.)
Of course, on the phones, we have a very different market situation. There we are, the market leader. We're shipping Opera in all sorts of phones; we're strong in the Japanese market. We've launched Opera Mini, which is a neat little application that enables the Web to be on almost every mobile phone out there now.
I think the mobile market might be what forces Microsoft down from their dominant position. I'm sure a lot of people will just accept IE 7 as it comes along, and they will force it on people by putting it as part of a security update.
Could it be that most people will say, "Well, it's included with the operating system, so let's just use it"?
Yeah. Indeed, our big challenge is the distribution channel.
Have you made any headway with the PC box makers?
I don't think I have anything to report there. We need to convince users that we have a superior product that's free, that has many of the features users would like to have. For example, we offer one feature, which is underestimated — or maybe people just don't know about. With Opera, a few mouse clicks lets you delete all traces of what you've been doing.
What about your plans for rolling out more widgets? It seems that there are some gaps, with certain countries not represented.
That's what the widget creators decide. We don't control them. That's like writing Web pages. It's not up to us; it's up to the widget creators.
Where are you, in terms of developing tools? Has the company has been talking about doing more in that sphere?
I think you will see things like debuggers and a developers' toolbar. I think it's a very good idea to help support the developer. It's hard to be a Web developer if you want to ensure interoperability and correctness and things like that.
We want to do our part in helping. I don't think you're going to see a suite of authoring applications from us. I think there are enough other people who are doing AJAX toolkits. We don't have to do that.
Conceptually, as you look at the way operating browsers have been developing, do you think the browser of 2011 will look pretty much the same as it does today?
It's an interesting question. I think some things are going to remain constant. For example, 10 years ago, I took a bet with somebody about whether HTML would be around 50 years from then. Now there are only 40 years left, but the computers we buy years in the future are going to be able to read the HTML created as of 1996.
Formats are going to be with us. There's so much content there, and there's really no reason to change them: HTML is here to stay; CSS, I hope; XML — all these acronyms that we're dealing with are here. They're going to evolve, but they're basically going to remain part of the same functionality. The user interface — that's the other part. I think the user interface is going to change a whole lot.
How so?
We're going to see browsers in all sorts of units, not just mobile phones or game consoles or laptops. There's going to be a range of products. As people get addicted to these Web sites such as CNET or Slashdot, they're going to want access to those all over. They're not going to be tied to a stationary PC or a laptop. They want ubiquitous access. So we're going to see browsers enter into places that we never thought about before.
Does the line between the browser and media player disappear?
I think the browser will evolve into a media player. There is no reason why you should have a separate media player from an HTML viewer. Any data you throw at a browser should be able to be handled in a reasonable manner. You need to have some codecs, and there are some patents involved, probably. But I think it can be resolved.
