Opera holds the web's most valuable secret • Hacker News Board

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#21

Post by Indyan » Mon, Nov 08, 2010, 5:13 PM UTC

jarek wrote: post #20

zitterbewegung wrote: post #2

It sort of begs the question will opera still be relevant in a few years down the line as rendering on phones gets cheaper and faster.

It kinda does. With the technology they have right now, I'd take interactive-javascript-capable Opera Mobile over proxying Opera Mini any day. But if in a year, Opera Mobile can make, one way or another†, Facebook or new Twitter or Google-Wave-of-the-day or any modern website noticeably faster, I won't care much if it means my data is going through Opera's servers, just like I don't care my email is on Google's serve…

"With the technology they have right now, I'd take interactive-javascript-capable Opera Mobile over proxying Opera Mini any day."

Take a look at the Turbo feature in Opera Mobile. It's similar to the Turbo feature on desktop. Once again, data is being sent through the server and it is being compressed. However, Turbo is capable of handling interactive-web-content (JavaScripts) because the rendering part is still being done locally.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#22

Post by jarek » Mon, Nov 08, 2010, 5:18 PM UTC

Indyan wrote: post #21

jarek wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kinda does. With the technology they have right now, I'd take interactive-javascript-capable Opera Mobile over proxying Opera Mini any day. But if in a year, Opera Mobile can make, one way or another†, Facebook or new Twitter or Google-Wave-of-the-day or any modern website noticeably faster, I won't care much if it means my data is going through Opera's servers, just like I don't care my email is on Google's serve…

"With the technology they have right now, I'd take interactive-javascript-capable Opera Mobile over proxying Opera Mini any day." Take a look at the Turbo feature in Opera Mobile. It's similar to the Turbo feature on desktop. Once again, data is being sent through the server and it is being compressed. However, Turbo is capable of handling interactive-web-content (JavaScripts) because the rendering part is still bein…

To be quite frank, I found that Opera Turbo rarely sped me up noticeably, and sometimes slowed me down. Just one user's experience in North America today, but there's definitely room for improvement.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#23

Post by mfukar » Mon, Nov 08, 2010, 5:19 PM UTC

zitterbewegung wrote: post #2

It sort of begs the question will opera still be relevant in a few years down the line as rendering on phones gets cheaper and faster.

I doubt it. Not only phones get increasingly powerful, but the core is also evolving, transitioning to IP and LTE being just around the corner; I believe pilot deployments have already started in the US and Japan.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#24

Post by alex_c » Mon, Nov 08, 2010, 5:23 PM UTC

ohyes wrote: post #10

axod wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I read that. Care to summarize?

You build an ad network that 'performs arbitrage on competing ad networks'. Opera makes money on the margin that potential advertisers save. This works because Opera controls the pipeline from web to phone.

I might be particularly dense today, but I don't get the link between controlling the pipeline and building an arbitrage ad network. Why can't you do one without the other?

Edit: to spell out my confusion. If you want to arbitrage ads, content providers would (presumably) need to include your ads in their content one way or another, so I don't see what advantage controlling the pipeline gives you. If you just want to inject ads into the content you're serving simply because you control the pipeline, then you can just as well inject regular ads, I don't see where the arbitrage part comes in.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#25

Post by flawawa2 » Mon, Nov 08, 2010, 5:25 PM UTC

chrislloyd wrote: post #12

axod wrote: post #3

In summary, Opera does proxying and caching for its mobile browser. The article does very little to tell us why that's 'valuable' or indeed a secret.

"Behavioural advertising". Opera could potentially collect information on mobile users' browsing habits/history. Should it decide to sell this information to third parties it would be worth a lot. If Opera decided to act on this it could be the most valuable part of its business model. GMail etc. have shown that people are willing to pay with their privacy. Disclaimer: I'm interning (so I don't know anything special)…

I was using Opera Mini on my mobile under the assumption that they value my privacy and do not store any data. If they would start doing this, it would outrage me enough that I might potentially even go back to Firefox on my desktop.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#26

Post by pmjordan » Mon, Nov 08, 2010, 5:25 PM UTC

stygianguest wrote: post #5

But what to do with such a cache? Build a new search engine to compete with google? I sincerely hope they will do that, but it cannot be easy. That said, if you have the cache, you might as well try. By the way, what about online banking etc. They are introducing yet another weak point by playing the middle man.

They don't play MITM to https sites for the Turbo feature in Opera Mobile or Desktop. No idea what they do for Opera Mini.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#27

Post by stcredzero » Mon, Nov 08, 2010, 5:40 PM UTC

dtf wrote: post #9

Opera Mini on the iPhone 4 is a pretty bad experience. Hope they get time to update it soon.

Opera Mini on the iPhone 4 is a pretty bad experience.

What they say about the economics of mobile bandwidth and computing power vs. server bandwidth/CPU rings true, however. The trick would be to optimize the rendering for specific mobile browsers. One could even use the "native" rendering engine to do this. Apple should implement this trick for mobile Safari, optimized for the specific screen sizes of the various iDevices. Not only would this save rendering time and battery power on those devices, it would enable yet another advertising strategy for them.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#28

Post by masklinn » Mon, Nov 08, 2010, 5:42 PM UTC

dtf wrote: post #9

Opera Mini on the iPhone 4 is a pretty bad experience. Hope they get time to update it soon.

Opera Mini is a terrible experience on the iPhone in general. They apparently never expected it to be accepted and pushed a quick (and bad) port of the Android version.

Probably wary of bad publicity (for once) Apple accepted the application… and since then Opera barely touched it. No update to the non-standard look&feel, no update to the non-standard settings management (and widgets), no update to the awful zoom… and apparently barely useable on the iPhone 4…

And since they have't done any update to it since May while they released 5.1 for just about every other smartphone, I'm not exactly expecting anything.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#29

Post by jarek » Mon, Nov 08, 2010, 5:50 PM UTC

alex_c wrote: post #24

ohyes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You build an ad network that 'performs arbitrage on competing ad networks'. Opera makes money on the margin that potential advertisers save. This works because Opera controls the pipeline from web to phone.

I might be particularly dense today, but I don't get the link between controlling the pipeline and building an arbitrage ad network. Why can't you do one without the other? Edit: to spell out my confusion. If you want to arbitrage ads, content providers would (presumably) need to include your ads in their content one way or another, so I don't see what advantage controlling the pipeline gives you. If you just want to…

I haven't thought about this extensively, but quickly considering this, I'd imagine one would be able to target users with ad networks much as you can do that with ads today. Given a number of networks, display ads from the network most likely to get a click-through from the user under consideration.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#30

Post by jarek » Mon, Nov 08, 2010, 5:54 PM UTC

pmjordan wrote: post #26

stygianguest wrote: post #5

But what to do with such a cache? Build a new search engine to compete with google? I sincerely hope they will do that, but it cannot be easy. That said, if you have the cache, you might as well try. By the way, what about online banking etc. They are introducing yet another weak point by playing the middle man.

They don't play MITM to https sites for the Turbo feature in Opera Mobile or Desktop. No idea what they do for Opera Mini.

Opera Mini is required to MITM by its design; it can't render HTML, only OPML fed to it by Opera's servers. I don't know what exactly the security implications are.