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Opera sends 90 out the door

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Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#71

Post by azakai »

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.

> 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.

They are using Chromium as their browser. Chromium is a full browser, so basically almost all the work on Opera's new browser will be done by Google. That is why I said "outsourcing development to Google", but of course I didn't mean it literally as in "paying Google to develop for them".

That's not speculation, that's just what it means when Opera is switching to Chromium.

Opera will add stuff on top. But Opera can't differentiate much in the core browser stuff, otherwise it would be forking Chromium and it would become harder and harder over time to get updates from upstream. That makes no sense technically or business-wise. What does make sense is to add things on top that are modular and separate, for example remove Google's login and replace it with Opera's, etc.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#72

Post by ferongr »

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…

That's assuming that what they said was said truthfully and not under the threat of a loaded gun. Opera the company shows signs of being on track be acquired (with the founder reportedly selling part of his shares to not have a majority stake anymore [1]) and management would probably like to minimize dissent and bad press.

[1] http://gigaom.com/2013/02/12/opera-founder-sells-shares-pote...

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#73

Post by objclxt »

gcp wrote: post #34
vdoma wrote: post #24

Just curious, how do browser-only companies like Opera or Mozilla make money? I know Opera Mini used to be shipped with phones, but what other sources of revenue do they have?

Advertising income due to selling the default homepage and search boxes. In case of Opera and Mozilla Corporation, the majority of that income is from Google (who calls this "traffic acquisition costs" in their accounting). Opera also licenses their browser to many phones and devices. That market may be starting to dry up.

Opera actually has a substantial sideline in selling mobile advertising, just like AdMob et al. I know this because my current employer spun-off our mobile ad network, which Opera then bought.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#74

Post by Erwin »

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.

The minimum hourly wage for an 18+ employee with no education and no experience the area in Norway is 152 NOK which is 28 USD. That's what you might get if you were to help building a house.

So the only way you might get a $40k/year in Norway, is if you are under 18 and work in a supermarket. Here it's 102 NOK/hour (but you probably wouldn't be allowed to have a full time job like that, this is just if you help out in a shop say 10 hours/week as an extra job while getting an education).

That's all the net wage, not including overhead!

Expect a pizza and a beer to cost you $50. Maybe $100 if you want some Danish cheese on top of it, which has a 277 percent custom tax. Foreign lamb has 429%. Such is the result of Norway not being part of EU proper!

Source: http://www.arbeidstilsynet.no/fakta.html?tid=90849

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#75

Post by 0x0 »

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.

It also seems like a place where you could quickly end up meeting ex-employers in new settings.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#76

Post by addlepate »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #18
runarb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A culture crash may have contributed to that so many are leaving. According to the Opera CEO, iOS and Android are the future for Opera now[0]. One could argue that Opera now are in more need of 25 years old iOS developers, that 40+ C++ specialists. 0: http://translate.google.no/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js=...

This comes across as incredibly ageist. Why do the iOS developers have to be 25?

I think that was the point...

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#77

Post by gsnedders »

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.

You assume all users are equally valuable to Google: if there were to be a market in which Opera had significant marketshare but Google had little, then those users would be far more valuable to Google than, say, an American using Firefox.

To quote the 4Q12 report:

"Opera’s monetization strategy for its desktop browser revolves predominantly around search. Google is Opera’s global search partner and provides the majority of desktop monetization. This global partnership is supplemented by local search partnerships in certain markets, such as Russia, Japan, and China, where Opera works with Yandex, Yahoo! Japan and Baidu, respective- ly. In addition, Opera has signed up e-commerce players such as Amazon.com (USA, Germany, Japan), Booking.com (64 countries), and Ozon (Russia) to further enhance ARPU."

"Desktop Consumer" made 16MUSD in the last quarter: that's ~64MUSD annually. Of course, that won't be all the Google revenue (as there's also the default browser on other platforms), but gives a reasonable baseline figure.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#78

Post by tripzilch »

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?

I kind of hope they would keep their "batteries included" philosophy. Meaning, retaining all the built-in functionality that you'd need 10+ extensions/plugins for in other browsers. For instance, you can't even change or add keyboard shortcuts in Chrome without an extension (at least, I couldn't figure out how to do it, and searching the web just pointed me to extensions).

Other features I use daily or at least weekly are: quick preferences (F12), per-site preferences, content-blocker, stylesheet switcher, paste-and-go (Chrome has this now, but not as a keyboard shortcut), go-to-parent-directory and way too many keyboard shortcuts to name here.

I'm sure I could get these features with a few choice extensions in Chrome, but I'd have to figure out which are the good ones first, and hope they play nice with eachother.

Either way, this is dark news nonetheless. I was somewhat positive about the switch to webkit/chromium but laying off this many people is bad for morale, bad for the product and of course most bad for the people that just lost their job.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#79

Post by Osiris »

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…

Opera isn't switching to WebKit, it's switching to the Chromium codebase (which uses WebKit)

All the articles I've read recently, including this article, all only mention WebKit. Where have you heard that they are switching to Chromium and not just WebKit? I'd be interested to read more about that.

Re: Opera sends 90 out the door

#80

Post by LaRakel »

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…

They'll be using chromium to some extend, that doesn't mean it's going to be a chromium browser that's exactly like Chrome, Yandex, Torch, SRWare and what have you. That is what you seem to imply.

As you probably know "some stuff on top of that" is rather broad in Opera's case, assuming they keep current functionality. If they have business sense they'll also want to keep their 300 million users, I doubt they'll do that by killing their product and making an Opera branded Chromium instead.

http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/300-million-users-and-move-to-...

It states that for the user, it's going to be the same browser. It also states Opera extensions will keep working, so at the very least we know they'll be making something not as chrome as the other chromium browsers.

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