However, I'm wondering if it should have been sold at all, specifically to a company that makes browsers. Why not to a hosting company like Rackspace's acquisition of Mailtrust and perhaps more importantly, why sell at all if it was a pretty profitable entity.
Now this may be the founder's big exit and I sincerely congratulate them for it, however my concern lies about the consumer (me). I hope it all turns out for the best of everyone involved, but I do have my reservations till I actually see FM operating as well as, if not better, than the FM of old.
Also: Opera doesn't just make browsers. Opera also makes all sorts of services for both users and b2b customers. The browser just ties it all together.
Then again, who knows? Maybe this will end up being awesome.
On the other hand, I've been using the paid Fastmail service for over 4 years now and one thing they did head and shoulders above the bigger players was their service and support. Plus they were always pretty geeky, making sure the expert user had lots of configuration options to tweak every possible thing. Their sieve filtering was perhaps the best out there and the old web interface rocks.
What I fear is Opera trying to make FM into a mass consumer product losing the technical edge and going for the more flashy features like online chats rather than putting in better sieve capabilities or something like better Pine/Alpine support. How I wish this doesn't kill FM (I've prepaid for 2 years more). I would hate to make a email service switch since that is my primary communication medium online.