Geir Ivarsøy was the lead programmer at Opera Software

Opera Software

Opera Software ASA is a Norwegian software company, primarily known for its Opera family of web browsers with over 220 million users worldwide. Opera Software is also involved in promoting Web standards through participation in the W3C. The company has its headquarters in Oslo, Norway and is...

. He and Jon von Tetzchner were part of a research group at the Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 state phone company (now known as Telenor

Telenor

Telenor Group is the incumbent telecommunications company in Norway, with headquarters located at Fornebu, close to Oslo. Today, Telenor Group is mostly an international wireless carrier with operations in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Asia, working predominantly under the Telenor brand...

) where they developed browsing software called MultiTorg Opera. The project was abandoned by Telenor, but in 1995 Geir and Jon obtained the rights to the software, formed a company of their own, and continued working on it.

Now known simply as Opera

Opera (web browser)

Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...

, the browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

 has become very popular despite the competition. Opera Software has grown to more than 500 employees since it first moved to its present offices in Oslo

Oslo

Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

.

At a board meeting in January 2004, Geir Ivarsøy announced his wish to resign as a board member in Opera Software, though he remained active in the company even after that. In June 2005 he was elected as a member of the Nomination Committee of the company.

Geir died in March 2006 after a long battle with cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

. Opera starting with Version 9 state "In memory of Geir Ivarsøy" on their opera:about page.

External links

• Death in the Family — an obituary
• Opera Web Browser