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Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#41

Post by jarek »

iwr wrote: post #38
jarek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not to confuse OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language), used to aggregate RSS files with OBML (Opera Binary Markup Language). I was confused why or how OPML would serve Opera's purposes in this instance.

Sorry about that -- I was wrongly convinced the Opera technology was called OPML, too. I was a little bit surprised by lack of Opera-centric results when googling it...

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#42

Post by axod »

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)…

Yeah people always say "They could sell data".

I don't really see who would buy behavioral data on peoples browsing habits. That's fairly worthless unless you have a clear route to monetize it and connect back to those users.

GMail has a clear route - they show advertising on gmail.

All Opera could do is mess around with web pages, inserting their own advertising, or messing with content. Which would enrage users and website owners alike. As soon as they try to monetize, people will stop using it.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#43

Post by axod »

anonymousDan wrote: post #37
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.

Yes it does. Basically it says that opera intends to strip out ads from the pages it serves and replace them with new ads. Which new ads? Opera will simply auction the space to the highest bidder. Obviously this will only work for ads that go through its servers, but apparently it controls a large proportion of the mobile proxying/caching market. Sounds nice in theory, not sure whether it will hold up in practice. No…

That's what I read on first glance, but then thought "haha nah that's illegal, immoral, and only a complete idiot would go down that route".

I'll believe it when I see it (And then I'll block access for Opera mini users to my website).

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#44

Post by [deleted] »

anonymousDan wrote: post #37
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.

Yes it does. Basically it says that opera intends to strip out ads from the pages it serves and replace them with new ads. Which new ads? Opera will simply auction the space to the highest bidder. Obviously this will only work for ads that go through its servers, but apparently it controls a large proportion of the mobile proxying/caching market. Sounds nice in theory, not sure whether it will hold up in practice. No…

[deleted]

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#45

Post by ashish_0x90 »

I am wondering though how the content providers themselves will react to opera deciding ad strategy on content provided by them if this happens. Right now opera is stripping all the ads and so even now content providers are only getting traffic and are not actually making money by any ads that they may be serving or any other content monetization strategy. How much benefit the providers will get really by opera's this move if any? Will the providers be then asked to pay to be in control of ads served on their content? Will they will need adapt to different ads system if the user is using opera as compared to some other browser?

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#46

Post by [deleted] »

yread wrote: post #35
guns wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More especially since they hijack HTTPS sessions. I always thought that playing MITM and caching secure sessions created a strong incentive to behave badly.

They don't do that: from http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/03/13/ Your privacy is important Even when Turbo is enabled, encrypted traffic does not go through our compression servers. This means that when you are on a SSL site, we bypass these traffic and let you communicate with the SSL site directly. Opera generates statistics of the usage of Opera Turbo, but these are aggregated numbers and no information can be link…

[deleted]

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#47

Post by plorkyeran »

yread wrote: post #35
guns wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More especially since they hijack HTTPS sessions. I always thought that playing MITM and caching secure sessions created a strong incentive to behave badly.

They don't do that: from http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/03/13/ Your privacy is important Even when Turbo is enabled, encrypted traffic does not go through our compression servers. This means that when you are on a SSL site, we bypass these traffic and let you communicate with the SSL site directly. Opera generates statistics of the usage of Opera Turbo, but these are aggregated numbers and no information can be link…

Turbo and Mini aren't the same thing; Turbo mostly just compresses everything and lossily recompresses images to make them smaller, while Mini outright doesn't have a local HTML rendering engine.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#48

Post by jonknee »

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #11
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.

The web requests would allow Opera to do some serious data-mining to sell advertising.

I'm not buying it. ISPs have had access to way more request data for years and haven't had success selling advertising. Site owners, privacy advocates and net neutrality folks would freak out and shut it down in a heart beat.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#49

Post by Tomek_ »

guns wrote: post #14
JoachimSchipper wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web requests would allow Opera to do some serious data-mining to sell advertising.

More especially since they hijack HTTPS sessions. I always thought that playing MITM and caching secure sessions created a strong incentive to behave badly.

Opera Mini tells you about that (and that the connection isn't actually protected) and discourage you from continue when you try to enter any https site.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#50

Post by joshd »

Indyan wrote: post #17
dtf wrote: post #9

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

Opera Mobile is the real mobile browser for smartphones. However, Opera can't develop O Mobile for iPhone due to App Store's TOS. Opera Mini can't handle modern websites using AJAX etc. because it can't render anything locally. It simply parses the data sent to it by the servers, which are responsible for rendering the website and compressing it. Also, the speed benefits are significant, only if you are on a slow con…

Opera Mini stores the page state on their servers. If you click on a JS link then the Opera Mini client treats it like a new page load, but the server is just executing the JS and resending the page.
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