Love all the comments here from folks who haven't read the article and are going on about the browser. This article is about Opera's alleged fraudulent loans business. Well really this article doesn't have much of its own to say, it's mostly a rewrite / summary of this article: https://hindenburgresearch.com/opera-phantom-of-the-turnarou...
What is going on at Opera Software?
11–20 of 53 posts
Re: What is going on at Opera Software?
#12Love all the comments here from folks who haven't read the article and are going on about the browser. This article is about Opera's alleged fraudulent loans business. Well really this article doesn't have much of its own to say, it's mostly a rewrite / summary of this article: https://hindenburgresearch.com/opera-phantom-of-the-turnarou...
...
Opera was purchased by a China-based investor group prior to its IPO. The group’s largest investor and current Opera Chairman/CEO was recently involved in a Chinese lending business that listed in the U.S. and saw its shares plunge more than 80% in just 2 years amid allegations of fraud and illegal lending practices.
Post IPO, Opera has now also made a similar and dramatic pivot into predatory short-term loans in Africa and India, deploying deceptive ‘bait and switch’ tactics to lure in borrowers and charging egregious interest rates ranging from ~365-876%.
Most of Opera’s lending business is operated through apps offered on Google’s Play Store. In August, Google tightened rules to curtail predatory lending and, as a result, Opera’s apps are now in black and white violation of numerous Google rules.
Re: What is going on at Opera Software?
#13I wish Opera would open source their presto engine. I'm guessing that isn't possible due to some licensing issues. Personally I find it unfortunate that all that amazing work will be lost. While I didn't use Opera due to it's proprietary nature, as a browser engine it was competitive for its time. I'm having the same feeling now about the EdgeHTML engine which is now being fazed out. This engine was a breath of fresh…
>I'm guessing that isn't possible due to some licensing issues. //
As in they're under a license agreement that prohibits open-sourcing?
Presumably unless it's specifically prohibited then they could release their code with holes where the licensed content goes, which would bump the problem up the chain to the next layer of owners and allow people to focus on them? Or let people adapt the codebase to work around the other libraries (or whatever)??
Opera did a lot for the web.
Re: What is going on at Opera Software?
#14> Hindenburg Research
Great name and interesting business.
Re: What is going on at Opera Software?
#15ya know what. when opera presto had feature parity with chrome, developers still walled their websites with useragent checks so for your average joe nothing worked and it created a negative feedback loop of users blaming the browser and devs avoiding supporting it. what else could they do? with chromium engine opera suddenly worked (lol).. there was still a lot of value on top of that, like a native speed dial that wasnt harvesting your data, fantastic bookmark management, a free vpn (yeah not for the ultraparanoid but still useful), tons of customization options, etc. its sad opera was sold and its days are probably numbered
Re: What is going on at Opera Software?
#16Anybody remember Operas beta feature "Opera Fridge"?
Source: http://images.ientrymail.com/webpronews/article_pics/fridge....
Re: What is going on at Opera Software?
#17Love all the comments here from folks who haven't read the article and are going on about the browser. This article is about Opera's alleged fraudulent loans business. Well really this article doesn't have much of its own to say, it's mostly a rewrite / summary of this article: https://hindenburgresearch.com/opera-phantom-of-the-turnarou...
So I guess this is what JWZ termed "Brand necrophilia" - taking a brand you bought and using it for another product (in his case it was AOL reusing the brand "Netscape" for a cheap ISP service).
Then again it seems the Opera mobile itself hasn't mutated to a predatory credit app, so it might not apply here.
Re: What is going on at Opera Software?
#18How did Opera get involved in the short term lending business? How does corporate governance for a public company allow this to happen?
Re: What is going on at Opera Software?
#19I wish Opera would open source their presto engine. I'm guessing that isn't possible due to some licensing issues. Personally I find it unfortunate that all that amazing work will be lost. While I didn't use Opera due to it's proprietary nature, as a browser engine it was competitive for its time. I'm having the same feeling now about the EdgeHTML engine which is now being fazed out. This engine was a breath of fresh…
Still love Presto and have copy of O12.16
Re: What is going on at Opera Software?
#20Sad for the company to pivot to abusive loan schemes.
I mean I’m sure it didn’t help when they switched to being yet another chromium wrapper - why pay for essentially the same browser you can get for free? That can’t have helped their revenue