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
Chromium (web browser) of "Conceivably Tech" stated about this version and the development of it, "it is obvious that Google is plugging along and is fine-tuning its browser … Chrome isn't surrendering its perception of the most advanced browser today anytime soon." As development wound up in early September 2011 Chromium 15 also gained a "self-crashing" feature that crashes the browser if a close command is not completed in 25 seconds, smooth scrolling when using the space bar, automatic pre- and auto-logins to Google's own web pages, task bar logos to show different profiles, greatly enhanced synchronization customization, including optional search engine synchronization