Perhaps looking to run with the big dogs (think Google, Apple), Opera announced it has acquired AdMarvel, a privately held Norwegian Web browser company who makes a product suite aimed at managing how ads are shuttled over to mobile phones.

"In our fast-growing industry, mobile advertising represents an interesting long-term revenue opportunity. Every month, nearly 50 million people access the Web using Opera on their mobile phones and together with AdMarvel, we think we can play an important role in the evolution of mobile advertising," said Lars Boilesen, Chief Executive Officer, Opera Software.

The deal is worth at least $8 million, which is how much Opera will pay AdMarvel in cash, plus up to an additional $15 million more should AdMarvel meet specific financial targets in the next 2 years.

Opera plans to have AdMarvel continue to operate as a separate company, but will also work to integrate AdMarvel's products with Opera Mini for operator offerings.

Microsoft's uber-long hiatus between IE6 and IE7 notwithstanding, browser makers can ill afford to stand idle, and on Tuesday Opera Labs served up Opera 10.5 pre-alpha for public consumption. The release comes less than a month after Opera Software released version 10.10 of its popular alternative browser, which recorded 12 million downloads in 7 days.

In a blog post, Roberto Mateu, Product Analyst at Opera Software, said the latest pre-alpha build is based on the Evenes branch and includes Windows and Mac builds, with an UNIX/Linux version slated for a later release. And while the company rarely opens up its software to user testing this early in development, Mateu said they made an exception this time because "we are really excited about what the Desktop team is cooking up and want your feedback."

Some of the new features include the Carakan JavaScript engine, which Mateu clams is 7x faster in SunSpider than Opera 10.10 with Futhark on Windows; Presto 2.5, which adds support for CSS3 transitions and transforms, and more HTML5 features; Vega, which is Opera's new graphics library; a Private tab feature; and better platform integration, among other goodies.

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Opera Software, the Norwegian-based browser maker, today announced that some 12.5 million people downloaded Opera 10.10 within a week's time, shattering previous Opera records and marking an increase of 25 percent when compared to the download rates of Opera 10 launched two months ago.

"With such remarkable download numbers, I am confident that we truly appealed to the needs of the Web-using public. Opera 10.10 is visually more compelling, and technologically speaking, it goes where no browser has gone before," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "We believe that, over time, Opera Unite has the power to erase preconceptions of how we access and share information on the Web."

Including the latest downloads, Opera now resides on the desktops of 45 million active Web surfers. That doesn't include the millions of mobile Opera users surfing the Web from their handheld devices and game consoles.

Opera's most recent download numbers are pretty impressive when you consider that version 10.10 is an incremental update. But in addition to Internet Explorer and Firefox, it will also face stiff competition from Chrome, which inches ever closer to offering extensions support to the general public.

Originally intended as a separate download -- or at least released that way in beta form -- Opera Unite now comes bundled with the release of Opera 10.10 beta as a standard feature.

Opera Unite is a peer-to-peer system with an API that allows developers to create feature-rich apps using only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Or as Opera describes it, a Web server in the Web browser. The software ships with six pre-installed apps, including photo sharing, an instant messenger, file sharing, a Web server, media player, and an app called "the fridge," which allows users to share notes with friends and family.

You can view a corny YouTube video of Unite here, which looks like it took a page from Microsoft's Launch Party video. If you want to give a whirl yourself, grab the download here.