The rumor of the hour is that google is acquiring opera, the Norwegian company with the cool web browser.

Since I am a proud Norwegian, avid Opera and Google user, it would be cool if this turns out to be true.

The rumor string goes like this:

Gary Price points to Dirson who points to Pierre Chappaz (former president of Yahoo! Europe).

Some say Google are after the mobile business of Opera.

In Norway the media are more interested in Opera's recent PR stunts. The last one beeing that a Opera user will get his/her face on a gigantic LCD screen on Times Square on New Years Eve.

Get your face on a giant screen at the Time square

This spring the CEO of Opera promised to swim across the atlantic if 1 million user downloaded the new version during some days.

Opera boss in the water last April.

These guys has got the flair for big PR stunts.

According to Om Malik, it was Google that helped to make Opera ad free (leading to more than 1 million downloads and the Opera boss in the water).

Om writes in a September post:

"I found out that the decision to give away the browser came after the company struck “compensation deals” with some of the search engines. Apparently, the premier tenant for browser’s built-in search window, is Google. “The current most important deal now is with Google,” company spokesperson Eskil Siversten wrote in an email. The company indicated that it has similar referral-for-dollars agreements with the likes of eBay and Amazon."

Are the Google rumours just a PR stunt or the real deal?