14 DAY TRIAL // For all the Facebook acquisition rumors, Opera is doing well on its own. Some revenue streams are drying up but others, such as mobile advertising, are more than making up for it. The biggest revenue earner remains the desktop browsers, even though it's significantly less popular than the mobile variants.
The mystery isn't that hard, people use the desktop browser more and do a lot more searches from it. Those searches make Opera money.
And they're going to make Opera even more money for the next three years or so, as the company announced it renewed, or rather, expanded its partnership with Google.
This new new partnership covers the search engine, i.e. Google will remain the default search engine in Opera and each search initiated from the browser will earn the company a bit of money. But it also refers to promotional deals for various Google products and services.
"Opera Software ASA and Google Inc. have entered into a new agreement to integrate Google as the default search partner for the Opera mobile and desktop browsers," Opera said in a statement.
"The agreement also includes promotion of various Google products and services. This agreement replaces the agreements entered into on 20.11.2009 and is effective through 01.08.2014. This agreement covers all global territories and includes all of Opera's standard mobile and desktop Web browsers," it said.
Google renewed its deal with Mozilla early this year, earning the Firefox maker some $300 million per year. Granted, Opera has a much smaller footprint on the desktop, but the deal covers the mobile space as well.
That's even as some are declaring Google Chrome the biggest browser worldwide. Yet Google, rightfully so, is more than eager to pay the other browser makers to seal its search dominance even if this means funding the Chrome competitors.