The article also left out another major benefit to Facebook. If they buy Opera they will get massive exposure in the CIS region where the browser products are

The article also left out another major benefit to Facebook. If they buy Opera they will get massive exposure in the CIS region where the browser products are the strongest. This can give them a hand overtaking vKontate and could be worth much to Facebook alone. Yandex / vKontate will know this and may want to defend by a counter offer so it could be interesting. http://gs.statcounter.com/#social_media-RU-monthly-201104-201204 http://gs.statcounter.com/#social_media-RU-monthly-201104-20... Also worth noting is if the co-founder Jon and Geir's (the other co-founder) widow don't want to sell their stakes, it will make things difficult for anyone to take over and all this speculation is just academic.