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300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit

my.opera.com

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Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit

#11

Post by zobzu »

DeepDuh wrote: post #7
lucb1e wrote: post #2

Yes, website compatibility is one of the major issues of Opera. The second thing is lack of support in terms of add-ons and such, but I don't see how they can help that. This might just get more people to use Opera as their desktop browser though. Every time I test a website on Opera, I'm like "I should really give this browser a chance". But every time that I try it for an evening, I notice the shortcomings in suppo…

I always liked them prioritizing to give you a complete out of the box features. Firefox's plugin hell made me crawl up the wall every time I saw the dreaded 'you must now restart Firefox' dialog. I assume it's better now but a few years ago Opera was so much ahead of FF in usability it wasn't even funny.

Many FF addons are now restartless.

Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit

#12

Post by gkoberger »

Interesting. Opera makes most of their revenue through licensing their rendering engine. That's how they've turned their ~2% marketshare into $180MM in revenue (compared to, say, Mozilla's ~26% and $300MM).

I wonder how this will affect that.

[EDIT: I mixed up currencies; fixed it.]

Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit

#14

Post by zobzu »

skc wrote: post #6

Hmm, any bets on how long before the folks at Mozilla make the move as well? It seems inevitable at this point.

I don't think Mozilla will ever switch. The reason why they've their own engine and try to keep a decent marketshare (which they do indeed have), is to be able to have a say on web standards, and the web in general.

Having a say ensure there isn't a single voice taking decisions that led us to things like IE6. And we're actually starting to see IE6-ish stuff happening with webkit, as it's nearly the only rendering engine for mobile.

One vendor != good for standards.

Oh also, their engine happens to be pretty close to webkit performance wise.

Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit

#17

Post by jsnell »

gkoberger wrote: post #12

Interesting. Opera makes most of their revenue through licensing their rendering engine. That's how they've turned their ~2% marketshare into $180MM in revenue (compared to, say, Mozilla's ~26% and $300MM). I wonder how this will affect that. [EDIT: I mixed up currencies; fixed it.]

I find those numbers hard to believe. Are you sure your currency conversions are correct?

Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit

#18

Post by SoftwareMaven »

The web may not be fully open, but it is far more open than the closed world of "apps".

(Of topic, perhaps...)

I hear this a lot, and I think, for the most part, web applications aren't remotely open (in general). While I can use any computer to connect to a web site, very few sites actually allow me to get my data out of them. In short, in my opinion, open access to data trumps open access by various clients.

On the one hand, we have systems that I can connect to with any OS I want but where my data is completely out of my control. On the other hand, we have walled gardens where the data sits, literally, in the palm of my hand. Both situations are ugly, but in the former, if I want my data, I have to pray the developers left me a method to do so. In the latter, it may not be trivial, but it is almost always possible[1].

I wish we had truly open systems across the board. Until we do, I vote we stop calling web systems open, because they are only open in terms of access, and that's not good enough.

1. For example, jailbreak, log in, and scp a SQLite db. Certainly not trivial but at least doable. In no way would I actually call this "open". I just think it is less closed than most web applications.

Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit

#19

Post by SoftwareMaven »

zobzu wrote: post #14
skc wrote: post #6

Hmm, any bets on how long before the folks at Mozilla make the move as well? It seems inevitable at this point.

I don't think Mozilla will ever switch. The reason why they've their own engine and try to keep a decent marketshare (which they do indeed have), is to be able to have a say on web standards, and the web in general. Having a say ensure there isn't a single voice taking decisions that led us to things like IE6. And we're actually starting to see IE6-ish stuff happening with webkit, as it's nearly the only rendering en…

I would think one vendor would be great for standards: it is the standard. It sucks for any kind of innovation, though, as IE6 shows incredibly well.

Out if curiosity, what IE6-ish things do you see WebKit doing?

Re: 300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit

#20

Post by masklinn »

jsnell wrote: post #17
gkoberger wrote: post #12

Interesting. Opera makes most of their revenue through licensing their rendering engine. That's how they've turned their ~2% marketshare into $180MM in revenue (compared to, say, Mozilla's ~26% and $300MM). I wonder how this will affect that. [EDIT: I mixed up currencies; fixed it.]

I find those numbers hard to believe. Are you sure your currency conversions are correct?

Likely, Opera Software had a revenue of NOK 900M in 2011, and USD 1 ~ NOK 5 yielding a ~USD 180M revenue. So his comment is only correct if you compare without conversion (Opera Software is indeed a billion a year in revenue, but that's a billion NOK)
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