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Opera being sold

MacBH928

MacBH928

macrumors G3
May 17, 2008
8,727
3,892
How does this company make any money?
They give out a free browser that has a market share of like less than 1% . I never understood why their browser got famous any way. It has nothing extra to offer.

I only know its famous because it was the "cell-phone" browser... and browsing on a cellphone was so bad that Steve Jobs made sure to specifically show off how much better it is to browse on the new iphone(2007) .
 
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grad

macrumors 6502
Jun 2, 2014
397
480
MacBH928 said:
How does this company make any money?
They give out a free browser that has a market share of like less than 1% . I never understood why their browser got famous any way. It has nothing extra to offer.

I only know its famous because it was the "cell-phone" browser... and browsing on a cellphone was so bad that Steve Jobs made sure to specifically show off how much better it is to browse on the new iphone(2007) .
Click to expand...

You must be joking. Unless you refer to the @#$%@ that became Opera AFTER their stupid decision to give it up and just mimic Chrome (i.e. versions after 12). Opera was THE browser to have/use for years. It brought innovation, iconic features, and a strong following to many users that are now checking and testing the spiritual successor, Vivaldi (which looks promising, despite also being based on Chromium, but still has a lot way to go).
 
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Strider64

Strider64

macrumors 68000
Dec 1, 2015
1,511
13,531
Suburb of Detroit
I was never impressed with Opera and I would forget to installed Opera when I bought a new computer, for one thing I sometimes get lazy when testing websites out on different browsers and secondly I figure the market share isn't the greatest for Opera.
 
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campyguy

macrumors 68040
Mar 21, 2014
3,413
957
MacBH928 said:
How does this company make any money?
They give out a free browser that has a market share of like less than 1% . I never understood why their browser got famous any way. It has nothing extra to offer.
Click to expand...
Opera sells a lot of advertising through their home/new pages, "sells" their data compression schema to other parties (the engine behind Opera Mini), and also "sells" their SDK to other parties - the apps in my Tivo Bolt (and the Roamio before it) are largely based on the Opera SDK and smartphone makers such as Samsung and Xiaomi use that SDK for their embedded browsers and other apps. Then, there's DVD players including my Panasonic and, smart TVs by Sony, Samsung, Philips, and Sharp all using their SDK...

Yep, the new owners will land access to a treasure trove of personal information. Not a goldmine as one first still has to dig it up, but rather a treasure trove as it's already mined, processed, put in a ribbon-tied box, and ready to be stolen...

Opera warned of declining ad revenue last summer and started shopping itself around largely based on that.

I'm using Opera for this forum, it's OK but it keeps my cookie/browsing history separate from my other browsing activities. I, too, will likely ditch Opera as a browser. As a Tivo user, I'll be on the phone and let them know I'll likely be selling my Bolt as it has my Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu accounts tied to it. Grumble...
 
sracer

sracer

macrumors G4
Apr 9, 2010
10,403
13,287
where hip is spoken
Noooooo! If that sales goes through, I'll have to ditch Opera. :( I had switch all of my devices from Chrome to Opera because Opera performed so much better than Chrome and had the same extensions that I used on Chrome.
 
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shansoft

macrumors 6502
Apr 24, 2011
437
268
Back doors...EVERYWHERE....

Especially that 360 company is involved.... That is a immediate uninstall for me...
 
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MacBH928

MacBH928

macrumors G3
May 17, 2008
8,727
3,892
campyguy said:
Opera sells a lot of advertising through their home/new pages, "sells" their data compression schema to other parties (the engine behind Opera Mini), and also "sells" their SDK to other parties - the apps in my Tivo Bolt (and the Roamio before it) are largely based on the Opera SDK and smartphone makers such as Samsung and Xiaomi use that SDK for their embedded browsers and other apps. Then, there's DVD players including my Panasonic and, smart TVs by Sony, Samsung, Philips, and Sharp all using their SDK...
Click to expand...

Okay, makes sense but why would Samsung and TV manufacturers pay Opera to use their SDK when they can just implement free open-sourced browsers like FireFox or Chromium ?
[doublepost=1455203888][/doublepost]
grad said:
You must be joking
Click to expand...

No I am not joking. I have known Opera for a very long time now maybe over 10 years. Every few years I check it out and I just don't understand whats the big fuss. i know it was first to come with some innovations but others always implemented it better.

All I know is that their bread and butter was cell-phone browsing and we all know that is dead for a very long time now. Cell-phone browsing was never an enjoyable to start with.
 
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campyguy

macrumors 68040
Mar 21, 2014
3,413
957
MacBH928 said:
Okay, makes sense but why would Samsung and TV manufacturers pay Opera to use their SDK when they can just implement free open-sourced browsers like FireFox or Chromium ?
[doublepost=1455203888][/doublepost]
Click to expand...
FWIW, my take is from a business perspective. Mainly, liability and support - I want to be able to call someone and get it fixed. Opera's back-end has been around for years, and AFAIK there's been no egregious breaches. And, Opera has a variant of their embedded browser that sits nicely on chipsets - I used Opera Mini on my S60 handsets and it was pretty nice to use, albeit a bit clunky when compared to today's offerings.

I can't answer why companies don't reach out to FF or Chromium. A chat with a programmer friend yielded a "no way" when I asked her that and she's already looking to Webkit or LG's WebOS for her next version of an embedded browser, even avoiding MS's own version of CE (whatever version it is now... - we still have CE 5.0 on some of our GPS equipment - ugh!). She said that the Opera SDK is pretty robust, and pointed to apps like Thunderbird are too difficult to get around its GUI and Chromium is a resource hog, then she went into coder-speak and my eyes glazed over...

Yeah, so I'm probably overreacting about quitting on Opera but the whole Lenovo backdoor thing just bugs me, given that I have multiple credentials associated with my Tivo account and Tivo pushes updates regularly to my Bolt that I have no control over so I'm just erring on the side of caution here I guess...
 
MacBH928

MacBH928

macrumors G3
May 17, 2008
8,727
3,892
I just downloaded Opera mini and thought it was not too bad. Guess its back to FireFox.

Privacy #1
 
kapp2

kapp2

macrumors 6502
Oct 22, 2015
321
68
Denmark
Anyone of you know if the sale has going trough, and will opera even be safe to use anymore ? :/
 
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C DM

macrumors Sandy Bridge
Oct 17, 2011
51,392
19,461
keysofanxiety said:
If you're reading this and you're one of the 6 Opera users out there, now is the time to uninstall it.
Click to expand...
Don't forget that they have more than just the browser, but also a VPN as well (among perhaps some other things).
 
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