Opera (web browser) layout engine of its competitor Google Chrome. Features of the Opera web browser include private browsing, tabbed browsing, download manager, mouse gestures and browser extensions. Opera began in 1994 as a research project at Telenor, the largest Norwegian telecommunications company. In 1995, it branched out into a separate company named Opera Software. Opera was first released publicly in 1996 with version 2.10, which only ran on Microsoft Windows. In an attempt to capitalize on the emerging market for Internet-connected handheld devices, a project to port Opera to mobile device platforms was started in 1998. Opera 4.0, released in 2000, included
History of the web browser business model, unlike the business model of 1990s Netscape, primarily consists of doing deals with search engines such as Google to direct users towards them – see Web browser#Business models. In 2003, Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer would no longer be made available as a separate product but would be part of the evolution of its Windows platform, and that no more releases for the Macintosh would be made. AOL announced that it would retire support and development of the Netscape web browser in February 2008. In the second half of 2004, Internet Explorer reached a peak market share of