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Comment by themartorana | Hacker News Reader

Something people may not know is Opera the Browser is only a part of the bigger pie. Opera is an ad company (through Opera Mediaworks - they own Ad Colony, for example, that might not mean much to anyone not in the mobile apps/game space, but it's a huge player[0]).

It makes me wonder how much the purchase was about the browser vs. a solid play in the mobile gaming market ad space.

[0] http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/24/confirmed-opera-buys-adcolo...

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Another less known fact is that Opera used to have a large footprint in the embedded browser markets. (eg. Wii, TVs, players, OS pre-boot environments)

OS pre-boot? I'm intrigued. Can you expound?

Just what it sounds like: http://apcmag.com/phoenix_puts_opera_web_browser_into_bios.h...

> Opera is an ad company

You can actually put numbers to this. In 2015 Opera made 75% of its revenue from their ad business. Calling them a browser maker in this year is straight up false.

Thanks for the explanation. A billion price tag for a browser with a constant low marketshare such as Opera sounded very surprising to me, but with AdColony it makes more sense.

Now that you point that out, this is very interesting. The purchasing company, being in the apps business, may derive more value from advertising its own apps over its own network (thus dodging paying third party ad networks) than it will from actually having a browser.

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