Geir Ivarsøy (June 27, 1957 – March 9, 2006) was the main programmer at Opera Software. He and Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner were part of a research group at the Norwegian state telephone company (now known as Telenor). They made browsing software called "MultiTorg Opera". Telenor stopped them from working on the program, but in 1995 Ivarsøy and Stephenson von Tetzchner got the rights to the software. They created a company of their own, and continued working on it.