If Google were in fact to buy out Opera it would be a tremendous gain for the browser market because of the increased competition that it would provide. Some of the comments from the News.com blog post seem to miss the potential benefit to Google and Firefox here.

Given how close Google is with the Firefox community, this one just doesn�t make sense. However, Google could benefit from Opera�s strong presence in the mobile space, where it is beating everyone to the punch. Nokia bundles Opera in most of its new phones including the red hot N-Series phones. In Japan, the ultimate mobile society, Opera is beginning to have an impact. Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Oslo-based Opera Software in an interview with Business 2.0 had said that wireless was the area of focus for the company.

Since Google is paying people to push Firefox, this doesn't make any sense, right? Well if you look at it from Google's perspective then it actually does make a lot of sense. Google would be able to push an alternative to Internet Explorer in the beginning and take more control and influence away from Microsoft. With the money that they get from the Google Toolbar bundle, they could probably stand a good chance of being able to pay for the cost of developing the new versions of Opera which they would then push for the mobile market, one in which Firefox has effectively no presence at all in. Yes, there is a project to port it to these smaller devices, but Opera already has a very strong presence there so it makes a lot of sense for Google to put their money there instead.

What would be very nice to see is Google sponsoring work on KHTML/WebCore as well. With money going into all three major non-Microsoft rendering engines, we might be able to avoid another bipolar browser war and actually have some real standardization for a change. Regardless, the real reason that Google has thrown its weight behind Firefox is that it needs a vehicle for pushing its search services over MSN Search, and that would be all but impossible to do with a market overwhelmingly dominated by Microsoft.