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

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#51

Post by anonymousDan » Mon, Nov 08, 2010, 11:20 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #43

anonymousDan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Out of interest, what's illegal about it?

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#52

Post by celticjames » Mon, Nov 08, 2010, 11:49 PM UTC

There's another company, Skyfire, that's been pushing a similar solution for the past few years. I've never met anyone who actually uses it.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#53

Post by thezilch » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 12:28 AM UTC

For those, like myself, that were wondering why there is talk about Opera Mobile being released, tomorrow, for Android -- I thought I already have Opera on my phone. After brief gleaning, I have Opera Mini, and here is what to expect with Opera Mobile: http://www.opera.com/mobile/specs/ -- mostly just the rendering engine being available to the device, as opposed to being server based.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#54

Post by eli » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 3:01 AM UTC

aw3c2 wrote: post #4

Opera Mobile will be released for Android tomorrow. I can't wait to finally have a great browser on my phone (the tab limitations of the default one make it unusable for me. All alternatives have major faults or drawbacks). http://www.opera.com/mobile/next/

I'm not personally a huge fan of it, but the Dolphin browser offers a better tab interface (as well as other features) and has been out on Android for some time.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#55

Post by tzury » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 4:24 AM UTC

I really do not see how this all proxy thing makes it "most valuable secret"

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#56

Post by rimantas » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 7:14 AM UTC

aw3c2 wrote: post #4

Opera Mobile will be released for Android tomorrow. I can't wait to finally have a great browser on my phone (the tab limitations of the default one make it unusable for me. All alternatives have major faults or drawbacks). http://www.opera.com/mobile/next/

From video it looks like Opera Mobile for Andorid does not support resizing to fill the screen on double tap, you have to adjust it manually :(

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#57

Post by BerislavLopac » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 12:21 PM UTC

Funny thing is that, as bandwidth keeps increasing, server side caching will be less and less meaningful.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#58

Post by Maxious » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 1:02 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 use Opera mini extensively on my phone, probably more than the Phone/SMS aspects. I would certainly opt in for all kinds of intrusive behaviour (behavioral advertising, changing ads, adding appropriate ads sometimes) to allow Opera to continue offering that proxying service for free and allocating development resources when required. ie. My Samsung B3310 doesn't let me rotate Opera Mini so using the keyboard is awkward but surely there are so many phones out there that it would take considerable resources for Opera to continue to respond to all the feedback.

I use AdThwart on my desktop Google Chrome though!

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#59

Post by DjDarkman » Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 1:35 PM UTC

Opera Mini is a HTML/Image viewer, not a real browser, it's too crippled to be called a web browser.

Comparing Opera's cache to Google's cache is not a good idea, they work differently.

Re: Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

#60

Post by famrey » Sat, Nov 20, 2010, 10:57 PM UTC

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.

"they hijack HTTPS sessions"

Trolling much? They aren't hijacking anything. Opera Mini is a thin client (which lets it run on just about any phone, including old and crappy ones), so they have no choice but to pass everything through the rendering engine on their servers.