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

Opera browser sold to a Chinese consortium for $600M

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 83 posts

Re: Opera browser sold to a Chinese consortium for $600M

#71

Post by dmix »

jacek wrote: post #10

I really like using Opera on Linux. It is the only full featured browser that has good, scalable UI and touch input support. And builtin adblocking + "battery saver mode" (developer version only) are really good additions. However, I do not trust Chinese companies with my data, I will need to switch to Firefox soon.

I'm still waiting for Chromium builds to work on Android, personally.

I trust the security acumen of the 'many eyes' who work on that project much more than Opera or Firefox. And Google doesn't vacuum up any data unless you volunteer it in Chrome. That's been proven.

Re: Opera browser sold to a Chinese consortium for $600M

#72

Post by mark_l_watson »

jacek wrote: post #32
syoc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people instantly go to the uninstall step when we are talking about the Chinese acquiring information, but the USG is fine. At least you most likely don't live in the country obtaining potentially incriminating information (if that is your worry).

Well, I do not use Chrome for the same reason. I am also in the process of migrating from Google to services in countries that respect privacy and do not share data with governments without a warrant.

Do you mind listing alternative services that you are looking at?

Re: Opera browser sold to a Chinese consortium for $600M

#74

Post by towercap »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #72
jacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I do not use Chrome for the same reason. I am also in the process of migrating from Google to services in countries that respect privacy and do not share data with governments without a warrant.

Do you mind listing alternative services that you are looking at?

For me, DuckDuckGo replaced Google, FastMail replaced Gmail and SpiderOak replaced Google Drive. Some trade-offs, but nothing too painful.

Re: Opera browser sold to a Chinese consortium for $600M

#75

Post by lyonlim »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #72
jacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I do not use Chrome for the same reason. I am also in the process of migrating from Google to services in countries that respect privacy and do not share data with governments without a warrant.

Do you mind listing alternative services that you are looking at?

ProtonMail looks interesting as well. They recently added support for custom domains.

Re: Opera browser sold to a Chinese consortium for $600M

#76

Post by lyonlim »

towercap wrote: post #74
mark_l_watson wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind listing alternative services that you are looking at?

For me, DuckDuckGo replaced Google, FastMail replaced Gmail and SpiderOak replaced Google Drive. Some trade-offs, but nothing too painful.

I looked at SpiderOak...but their mobile apps really need some work..that's the only thing holding me back. How's your experience using SpiderOak?

Re: Opera browser sold to a Chinese consortium for $600M

#77

Post by dezzeus »

Mithaldu wrote: post #69
dezzeus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get my attention and curiosity; it is a browser, what were the "features" that you are talking about ? At some point I've read that it had an e-mail client, later externalized; if those are the "feature", so I'm also ok with that, as I'm more into Vim than emacs. That's my point. If you're referencing something else, I'm curious. :)

Well, the email client for one. Not only is it built in, it also functions better than any other i've seen. You know how many email clients have a spam folder that learns by what you drop in it and pull out of it? Opera mail allows you to enable that auto-learning for EVERY folder. It works great. The mail client also doubles as an RSS reader client. Aside from that, it also has mouse gestures that are core in the br…

> [...] it also has mouse gestures that are core in the browser [...]

> It has one-button keyboard shortcuts [...]

> I can configure activation, deactivation of js, plugins (flash, etc.) [...] I can tell plugins like flash to load on demand [...]

> I can have a vertical tab bar and a horizontal one at the same time.

All of this is still here.

> [...] I have 100+ tabs open and the thing sits at 2 GB [...]

I'm not used to leave opened such a large number of tabs, but even today's Opera seems to handle them quite good (I may be wrong, but I think that Chromium smartly remove some tabs from memory and reload them later, on demand and with cache).

> A very powerful url blocker [...]

If you really need this, I think that /etc/hosts is the way.

> I can actually manually edit menu and toolbar ini files [...]

> I can add custom panels in the side panel [...]

> I can open a list of all links on the current page, filter it by various conditions, select the ones i want and hit "download these to a folder" in one action.

Perhaps extensions (which I do not use) are designed to simplify and customize the process...

> I can edit text-based style [...] to completely restyle the browser effortlessly.

Not really a feature, but a "nice to have". As for myself, I'm ok with the OS-native look.

> Getting to the screen where i can view and edit cookies [...]

> I can disable all CSS for the active page with one click.

I think that you can achieve the same result from the Inspector with a couple of more clicks (that's not a behavior that most users need).

:)

Re: Opera browser sold to a Chinese consortium for $600M

#78

Post by Mithaldu »

dezzeus wrote: post #77
Mithaldu wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the email client for one. Not only is it built in, it also functions better than any other i've seen. You know how many email clients have a spam folder that learns by what you drop in it and pull out of it? Opera mail allows you to enable that auto-learning for EVERY folder. It works great. The mail client also doubles as an RSS reader client. Aside from that, it also has mouse gestures that are core in the br…

> [...] it also has mouse gestures that are core in the browser [...] > It has one-button keyboard shortcuts [...] > I can configure activation, deactivation of js, plugins (flash, etc.) [...] I can tell plugins like flash to load on demand [...] > I can have a vertical tab bar and a horizontal one at the same time. All of this is still here. > [...] I have 100+ tabs open and the thing sits at 2 GB [...] I'm not used…

Not gonna bother to answer in detail because you are not worth the time, but you're making assumptions without actually knowing how the features work, and you're quite wrong in your assumptions.

Re: Opera browser sold to a Chinese consortium for $600M

#80

Post by xg15 »

dezzeus wrote: post #77
Mithaldu wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the email client for one. Not only is it built in, it also functions better than any other i've seen. You know how many email clients have a spam folder that learns by what you drop in it and pull out of it? Opera mail allows you to enable that auto-learning for EVERY folder. It works great. The mail client also doubles as an RSS reader client. Aside from that, it also has mouse gestures that are core in the br…

> [...] it also has mouse gestures that are core in the browser [...] > It has one-button keyboard shortcuts [...] > I can configure activation, deactivation of js, plugins (flash, etc.) [...] I can tell plugins like flash to load on demand [...] > I can have a vertical tab bar and a horizontal one at the same time. All of this is still here. > [...] I have 100+ tabs open and the thing sits at 2 GB [...] I'm not used…

So lots of additional work to somewhat almost maybe restore the functionality that had been there already in the first place.
Post reply on HN