Tide

Plans for mergers and takeovers in Hordaland's public transport business came forth in September 2005 when Connex Norge reported interest in purchasing Gaia. On November 8 Gaia and HSD suggested a merger between the two companies instead, but the city cabinet leader of Bergen Municipality, Monica Mæland and the mayor of Os Municipality opposed the idea. The employees of both companies openly supported the idea in June 2006. Two other companies, Arriva and Nettbuss, a subsidiary of the Norwegian State Railways also showed interest in a takeover.

As majority shareholder in Gaia, the city council of Bergen Municipality decided to vote in favour of the HSD-Gaia merger on June 19, 2006. The name "Tide" was presented on June 27. Just a day before the Extraordinary General Meetings in both companies, Arriva submitted an indicative bid of NOK 380-400 million and the representative of Bergen's cabinet, Henning Warloe, voted against the merger at Gaia's general meeting on June 29. As this was against the city council's resolution a motion of no confidence was proposed. This motion failed on November 20, 2006 A new general meeting was called for Gaia and on July 17, the merger was approved in that company as well. The Norwegian Competition Authority approved the merger on October 25.

Initially, the buses in the new company retained their old colors, yellow for Gaia, red and white for HSD, with only the logo being changed. New buses will have a white livery.

The value of both the new brand name "Tide", as well as the new logo have been subject to some debate. "Gaia" and "HSD" were both well-established trademarks, and two experts on trademarks stated that the replacement name and logo were too anonymous. Tide itself have argued that the name is positive ("i tide" means "on time" in Norwegian), and that the logo represents both the land and sea-based transportation. Another criticism of the logo is that it resembles the word "shit" when viewed in a mirror.