The real question is, why would Apple have approached Opera in the first place? Simple. It's not like the Cupertino company has thousands of employees to throw at a browser project — with only a few thousand in corporate and the rest in retail, Apple is actually happy to outsource engineering whenever possible. Especially when the company can ensure an exclusivity deal and enforce some creative control over the interface. But that demand of exclusivity led Opera to bow out, which forced Apple to end up developing its own mobile browser after all.

If the source's assertion is true, passing on Apple could prove a miscalculation on Opera's part. Apple is said to have offered it a large piece of then-theoretical iPhone sales. Opera chose a smaller piece of a larger pie in licensing its Opera Mini to multiple carriers and manufacturers, and so far, it's done fine with that strategy.

But even with the bugs and lawsuits, the iPhone is set to beat Steve Jobs's public estimates that Apple would sell 10 million units this year. Meanwhile, mobile search partner Google is intent on porting the company's new Chrome browser to the Android mobile software platform and both Mozilla and Microsoft recently upgraded their competing Firefox and Explorer browsers.

Four years in, and Opera has big money to blow on a bar tab at the Supper Club in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood. That will buy a lot of champagne and at least a temporary warp in Apple's reality distortion field. But enough to make up for the iPhone money Opera passed up? That remains to be seen.

85 percent of Mozilla's $67 million in revenues in 2006, the most recent year reported, came from Google, it's true. But Sullivan seems to think this is some kind of bribe, with Mozilla picking Google as the search engine because the company is showering the browser maker with cash.

Utter nonsense. Google pays Mozilla a cut of the revenue generated when Firefox users conduct Google searches. In Asia, Mozilla defaults to Yahoo, not Google, because Yahoo has a larger user and advertiser base in the region, making its searches more lucrative. It's all about the money, sure. But why shouldn't it be?

Mozilla could open up Firefox as Sullivan suggests. The end result would be a lot of annoyed users who have to go through an extra step as they pick their search engine, which would likely be Google anyway. Google doesn't need to bribe Mozilla; the superior economics of its business do the work for Google.

This, by the way, is also why nothing has come of the perpetual rumors that Google is working on its own browser. It could easily build one. But why bother? As long as Google's search ads are more profitable than the competition, there's no reason for Mozilla to send Firefox users elsewhere. A Google browser might hurt adoption of Firefox, which would do more to lower the number of Google searches than Google's own browser would do to raise it. Build a browser? Sure, Google might get to that after it finishes shooting itself in the foot.

Here's something I wonder: Why does no one ask the same question about Apple's Safari browser, which likewise defaults to Google? Google must be paying Apple a considerable amount of money every year, though not enough to break out in its financial reports; Google CEO Eric Schmidt serves on Apple's board, as does Al Gore, who is a senior advisor to Google. Apple has a monopoly on the browser installed on Mac OS X computers, and makes it harder to switch the default search engine; I don't hear anyone calling for Apple to free its browser search.

Which makes me think people like Sullivan are picking on Firefox not because they believe in open browser search, but because Mozilla, owned by a nonprofit, is a more easily pressured target. A familiar stratagem of attention-seeking activists. Let's not pretend that calling for open search is anything but a tactic for generating false controversy. And let's not pretend that Mozilla is doing anything except trying to make money.

The iTunes for Windows license (PDF) has no such restriction: "2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions. This License allows you to install and use the Apple Software."

The European Commission did not pursue the same complaints in their own recently concluded antitrust suit against Microsoft, and Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari have been slowly but surely taking market share from Microsoft's dominant product. But it is Europe, so one never knows. Maybe Opera can successfully sue itself into getting some users, and keep Microsoft spending money on lawyers instead of coders.