...is that they're often fact-deficient.

The rumor that's been making the rounds over the past 24-hours is speculation that Microsoft has bought, or is buying, Opera (the makers of the excellent Opera web browser). The source of this multi-hundred-million-dollar rumor, involving two publicly-traded companies, is one small, random, tech "ezine". Nonetheless it's been repeated on Slashdot, Digg, along with many other sites and blogs.

The indirect birthplace of the rumor - perhaps the source of the plot for someone's fiction - was John C. Dvorak's commentary yesterday that Microsoft should buy Opera, given that they're letting the IE browser rust on the Mac. Opera, Dvorak claimed, would provide Microsoft with a cross-platform solution.

The problem with Dvorak's hypothesis, among many other logic gaps, is that Microsoft doesn't want a cross-platform solution. Internet Explorer on the Mac wasn't abandoned because it was too difficult to maintain, and it certainly wasn't that Microsoft couldn't keep up. Instead, it was strategically abandoned because Microsoft couldn't rationalize spending the time and effort to create a browser for someone else's platform. It also brought Microsoft under additional scrutiny: It's one thing for the monopoly operating system vendor to use some of those profits to enable their own platform, but it's quite another to provide a free browser to edge out competitors on other platforms as well. Internet Explorer on the Mac undermined Microsoft's bundling proposition as well (the whole "it's a part of the operating system...that you can also run on other operating systems...").

Ultimately this rumor is so void of any logical foundation that it is an indictment of the group-think sites that it has gotten the attention that it has (though it got the originator website exactly what they wanted, which is a lot of attention). Once again I'm setting myself up for a hearty serving of egg-on-the-face, boldly proclaiming that it is very unlikely that this story is true, but that's exactly what I'm saying. At least the Google-buying-Opera nonsense of a month or so ago could be mentally rationalized to some degree, but Microsoft-buying-Opera is just over the top ridiculous.

On top of all of that, there are some legalities that are certainly going to start biting small internet papers and blogs that perpetrate this sort of rumor mongering: Making false statements about publicly traded companies in ways that can impact their valuations might seem like a harmless, fun way of boosting the hits, but there are legal restrictions on that sort of fiction. I'm not saying with certainty that this particular story is untrue, but it seems highly likely to be the case.

UPDATE: While scanning the discussion boards, I've noticed that a common technique to keep the hype alive is to focus on the mobile market as Opera's killer valuation: Opera has a micro-browser that runs on cellphones, therefore that legitimizes the purported buyout (as only the few true believers would think that Microsoft replacing IE7 with Opera is even remotely possible).

There are several problems with this.

• Microsoft already competes in the mobile space with the PocketPC OS, and a mobile version of Internet Explorer
• Even then, there is very little money to be made having your browser on a cell phone - this isn't IE versus Netscape of 1997. This is 2005, and the primary concern is to be the site that the micro-browser goes to, not the browser itself. In the case of cell-phones, there is little chance that the providers would allow Microsoft to direct it to a Microsoft property, so even that minor advantage is lost
• Many of Opera's customers (who are the hardware vendors - not Joe on the street) for the mobile browser are Microsoft competitors. They would dump it in a heartbeat if it was acquired by Microsoft

The mobile angle does nothing to rationalize the scenario.