TRIVIA QUIZ: Which browser was the first to implement tabs, integrated search, zoom, saved sessions, and runs on mobile phones and TVs? Hint: it wasn't Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome.

Opera, which came out of Norway's Telenor in 1994, is a genuine maverick. The company charged for the browser – "We had no way to make money" says founding CEO Jon Tetzchner – when its competitors were free. Its two founders survived for five years on £5,000 start-up funding – "The minimum you need to do a limited liability company" – while Netscape went public with a giant splash and Microsoft funded Internet Explorer out of pocket change. And because Tetzchner's father is a psychology professor specialising in children with disabilities, it focused from the beginning on accessibility.

"In 1994," says Tetzchner, who joined Telenor straight from a masters in computer science, "we had a big discussion in our group over whether to make a browser, and half of the team believed it was impossible to compete with Mosaic, and the other half believed we could. The turning point was that Mosaic was fairly shaky on Windows."

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