Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Face opera

quirksmode.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 116 posts

Re: Face opera

#11

Post by zxoq »

rkwz wrote: post #8

>Trident is not for sale, Gecko is irrelevant and possibly too heavy for mobile use, and WebKit is interesting but rather crowded. Presto, Opera’s engine, is the only one that’s available. Why is Gecko irrelevant? It still has a good chunk of marketshare.

Not on mobile, which is where Facebook wants a browser.

Re: Face opera

#12

Post by enneff »

sparkie wrote: post #4

Opera really could set any price they want. The browser itself is worth far more than some crap like instagram - and Facebook really need it quite badly. I'll be disappointed if they don't get at least $2bn for it. :p

Why do they need it "quite badly"?

Re: Face opera

#13

Post by [deleted] »

zxoq wrote: post #11
rkwz wrote: post #8

>Trident is not for sale, Gecko is irrelevant and possibly too heavy for mobile use, and WebKit is interesting but rather crowded. Presto, Opera’s engine, is the only one that’s available. Why is Gecko irrelevant? It still has a good chunk of marketshare.

Not on mobile, which is where Facebook wants a browser.

[deleted]

Re: Face opera

#14

Post by bobsy »

I still don't see the value in it. It made sense when Google did it. Chrome came and shook things up introducing features no existing browsers had and placing an emphasis on JavaScript speed. This was critical for Google as a number of its apps make heavy use of it.

I don't use Chrome anymore, I switched back to Firefox but its undeniable that it had a massive impact on the speed of browser development and probably the progress of web standards.

Now.. if Facebook bagged Opera what would it add to Facebook or what benefit would Facebook get? A bigger say in web standards. Does this matter much to Facebook? They would have a mobile browser.. this still doesn't help them make a mobile app which doesn't suck.

I just don't see the point. The most likely result of this would be alienating existing Opera users. I would also expect Google to switch Opera to web-kit to reduce development costs. I don't see how a company like Facebook will see a return of investment by buying out Opera.

Re: Face opera

#15

Post by rplnt »

chewxy wrote: post #2

I'll stop using Opera (currently my default browser) if facebook acquires it. Such is the level of trust I have over facebook.

Sadly, there is no viable alternative. I use Chrome as my second browser, I occasionally use Firefox and although they are both great browsers, they offer nothing close to Opera. No configurability whatsoever and no extra features you are accustomed to.

Re: Face opera

#16

Post by rplnt »

sparkie wrote: post #3
chewxy wrote: post #2

I'll stop using Opera (currently my default browser) if facebook acquires it. Such is the level of trust I have over facebook.

What makes you trust Opera any more already? They're already quite capable of logging every domain you visit, via the fraud prevention mechanism (Enabled by default). Whether Opera are recording this I don't know, but you can probably be quite certain that Facebook will, if they acquire it.

At least they say that they don't log it. Google's Chrome does send and log every website you visit.

Re: Face opera

#17

Post by bad_user »

zxoq wrote: post #11
rkwz wrote: post #8

>Trident is not for sale, Gecko is irrelevant and possibly too heavy for mobile use, and WebKit is interesting but rather crowded. Presto, Opera’s engine, is the only one that’s available. Why is Gecko irrelevant? It still has a good chunk of marketshare.

Not on mobile, which is where Facebook wants a browser.

I use Firefox on my Android. It's a little heavy but it's OK. I like it a lot because I'm a desktop Firefox user and it knows how to sync my bookmarks and my saved forms data and my history back and forth. The UI is also much better than Android's built-in browser and it's been making a lot of progress.

I think people are not seeing the forest from the trees here. Firefox has a lot of potential on mobile phones, because Firefox has a lot of desktop users that would want the Firefox on their mobile devices, at least for the Sync functionality.

Also, on mobile WebKit may be the most popular, but there are so many incompatibilities and performance differences between Android's browser, Blackberry's browser, the webkit-powered S60 browser, Chrome, Safari and Mobile Safari that you might as well count those as different engines.

Re: Face opera

#18

Post by klausa »

I'm really baffled by all those people saying that they will stop using Opera if FB acquires them.

I mean - okay, If they start modifying it to send your data to Facebook without way to opt-out - sure, do that.

If they start showing ads in fastmail and reading your mails - sure, that's reasonable.

But I really think that doing that the moment FB acquires Opera would be quite an overreaction.

Re: Face opera

#19

Post by sho_hn »

chewxy wrote: post #2

I'll stop using Opera (currently my default browser) if facebook acquires it. Such is the level of trust I have over facebook.

Call me a zealot, but if there's one piece of software that I feel ought to be open source, it's a critical centerpiece of modern communication like the web browser. As such, Opera is already not an option for me. In fact, a Facebook acquisition could even change that if the new regime decided to produce a Chromium equivalent.
Post reply on HN