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Opera sends 90 out the door

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Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#61

Post by prumek »

azakai wrote: post #40
bobsy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that all the developer time they are saving would go into improving the browser and only a small number of people would be contributing to WebKit. I.e. browser improves faster as less time is spent working on the browser engine. Now it is obvious. Cost saving! Which is fine, just a bit disappointing. Especially considering how they have 3 products. Opera, Opera Mini and the new Tablet Browser (I don't know…

Opera isn't switching to WebKit, it's switching to the Chromium codebase (which uses WebKit). Chromium is a full browser, so Opera is basically outsourcing it's browser development to Google (which aside from practically all Chromium work also does most WebKit work these days). This makes perfect business sense for Opera - why work hard to make a browser, when it can get one for free. As a plus, that browser uses Web…

What makes you think Opera is outsourcing development to Google? Just because something is using a framework doesn't mean they aren't using it to build their own thing on top of it.

Your comment doesn't make sense. It's wild speculation based on an article with false statements.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#62

Post by prumek »

gcp wrote: post #5

I thought their press release of less than a week ago said those people were supposed to improve WebKit :-) Can imagine that quite a few of those fired would have been tough to motivate, though. Nobody likes seeing their lifework put out and shot.

What makes you think they aren't goig to work on Webkit? Out of those 90 people who left or were fired, there were marketing, sales, etc. personell. Only a minority was probably an actual developer.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#63

Post by plorkyeran »

bambax wrote: post #53
azakai wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opera isn't switching to WebKit, it's switching to the Chromium codebase (which uses WebKit). Chromium is a full browser, so Opera is basically outsourcing it's browser development to Google (which aside from practically all Chromium work also does most WebKit work these days). This makes perfect business sense for Opera - why work hard to make a browser, when it can get one for free. As a plus, that browser uses Web…

But that means Opera is dead. There is no Opera. What is the value of a skin on top of Chrome?

If they manage to keep most of their features not directly related to the rendering engine that Chrome doesn't have, it would be of great value.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#64

Post by pjmlp »

wilhelm wrote: post #22

It's worse than the article describes. Those laid off are terrified to say anything publicly. From what I can gather, the total may be double the quoted number. In addition, morale is at rock bottom, with a number of people leaving on their own. Opera as we knew it is gone. I worked for Opera for seven years, three of them managing the core testing team. I left a year ago. It breaks my heart to see how the current ma…

I learned long time ago to always be loyal to the team members, not to management.

For management each employee is just an expense number in a spreadsheet.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#65

Post by chetanahuja »

blowski wrote: post #43
aw3c2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They default the user to search engines. And add default bookmarks.

At a conservative average of $40K pa per employee, that's an annual staff bill of around $35M annually. The Firefox-Google deal is worth $300M annually, and their user base is 15x larger. Add in other costs, and it's not hard to see that either they've got a huge source of other income or they are hemorrhaging cash.

At a conservative average of $40K pa per employee

Well that's extremely conservative. I don't know whether you speak from personal knowledge of Norwegian market but I can tell you that it's about 1/4 of what a intermediate/senior level engineer in the bay area would make. In fact it's about at the level of what a senior engineer (from a top level school) in India would make.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#66

Post by wilhelm »

prumek wrote: post #55
wilhelm wrote: post #22

It's worse than the article describes. Those laid off are terrified to say anything publicly. From what I can gather, the total may be double the quoted number. In addition, morale is at rock bottom, with a number of people leaving on their own. Opera as we knew it is gone. I worked for Opera for seven years, three of them managing the core testing team. I left a year ago. It breaks my heart to see how the current ma…

Your conspiracy theory kind of falls flat on its face, since former employees have in fact spoken publicly on this. What you can gather doesn't seem to be very useful either since the quoted number is correct. It's the number of employees reported by Opera to the authorities. But maybe in your conspiracy, Opera manipulates those numbers to lie to the authorities for some unknown, sinister reason? How is the current m…

Who are you?

I'll respond to this if I know who I'm talking to.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#67

Post by cpeterso »

prumek wrote: post #61
azakai wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opera isn't switching to WebKit, it's switching to the Chromium codebase (which uses WebKit). Chromium is a full browser, so Opera is basically outsourcing it's browser development to Google (which aside from practically all Chromium work also does most WebKit work these days). This makes perfect business sense for Opera - why work hard to make a browser, when it can get one for free. As a plus, that browser uses Web…

What makes you think Opera is outsourcing development to Google? Just because something is using a framework doesn't mean they aren't using it to build their own thing on top of it. Your comment doesn't make sense. It's wild speculation based on an article with false statements.

Opera is switching to Chromium, which is a complete browser.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#68

Post by wilhelm »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #37
wilhelm wrote: post #22

It's worse than the article describes. Those laid off are terrified to say anything publicly. From what I can gather, the total may be double the quoted number. In addition, morale is at rock bottom, with a number of people leaving on their own. Opera as we knew it is gone. I worked for Opera for seven years, three of them managing the core testing team. I left a year ago. It breaks my heart to see how the current ma…

> "Those laid off are terrified to say anything publicly." I'm curious as to why? Norway doesn't seem like a place where people would fear their ex-employers.

I can only speculate, and I don't think that's particularly helpful. The 2010 downsizing was quite transparent. This time no ordinary employees seem to have the full picture of what exactly is going in.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#69

Post by azakai »

bambax wrote: post #53
azakai wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opera isn't switching to WebKit, it's switching to the Chromium codebase (which uses WebKit). Chromium is a full browser, so Opera is basically outsourcing it's browser development to Google (which aside from practically all Chromium work also does most WebKit work these days). This makes perfect business sense for Opera - why work hard to make a browser, when it can get one for free. As a plus, that browser uses Web…

But that means Opera is dead. There is no Opera. What is the value of a skin on top of Chrome?

Opera's browser and it's engine, Presto, are dead.

Opera is building a new browser using Chromium. They can still add value on top of that - Opera has more things than just a browser, they have their server-side rendering, ad network and analytics, etc. They can integrate those with a version of Chrome that has Opera branding and there could be value in that.

Note also that to include Chrome on your phone means a deal with Google. Typically that means using all Google services (docs, mail, app store). If you want to use something else, you can't use Chrome, so that might be an opportunity for Opera.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#70

Post by blowski »

chetanahuja wrote: post #65
blowski wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a conservative average of $40K pa per employee, that's an annual staff bill of around $35M annually. The Firefox-Google deal is worth $300M annually, and their user base is 15x larger. Add in other costs, and it's not hard to see that either they've got a huge source of other income or they are hemorrhaging cash.

At a conservative average of $40K pa per employee Well that's extremely conservative. I don't know whether you speak from personal knowledge of Norwegian market but I can tell you that it's about 1/4 of what a intermediate/senior level engineer in the bay area would make. In fact it's about at the level of what a senior engineer (from a top level school) in India would make.

It was very conservative (although I guess not all Opera employees are senior engineers). I was trying to make the point that there's no way Opera can be profitable from just selling search engine traffic. The open accounts show that they spent around $25M on salaries in Q4 of last year.
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