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
Google Chrome September 1, 2008. Google subsequently made the comic available on Google Books and mentioned it on their official blog along with an explanation for the early release. The product was allegedly named "Chrome" because Google wanted to minimize the chrome of the browser, though this meaning was added somewhat post-hoc, the code name before release apparently chosen from a connotation of speed. The browser was first publicly released on September 2, 2008 for Windows XP and later, with 43 supported languages, officially a beta version, and as a stable public release on December 11, 2008. On the same day, a