Opera used to be a fantastic web browser, with a custom high-performance Presto rendering engine and features like tabbed windows that didn't show up in competing browsers until years later. However, the modern Opera browser is a shadow of its former self, reliant on chasing trends and meme advertising to
  • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
    41·
    11 months ago

    TL;DR company shady

    The main 3 points seem to be: China-owned, predatory loan applications, and spreading themselves across too many concept/trend browser spinoffs. Honestly this is kinda old news and won’t stop anyone I know from using the thing. You can’t just say they’re “probably” harvesting your data for “nefarious” reasons and expect people to all jump to Firefox (as nice as that may be).

    • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
      15·
      11 months ago

      I’d add a fourth main point: they have a documented history of creating browsers and then abandoning them, leaving any unaware users without security updates indefinitely

  • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
    34·
    11 months ago

    This is a great read. Never knew Opera transitioned to an enshittified abomination of crypto spyware and bloatware.

    • dan@upvote.au
      9·
      11 months ago

      It used to be great… A truly innovative browser that had so many features that even browsers today don’t have.

      I switched away from it when they switched to the Blink engine, probably around 2012 or so? It’s been all downhill since then.

      • renard_roux@beehaw.org
        6·
        11 months ago

        Same, used Opera religiously back in the day, so much more functional than the rest. Switched to Chrome (yes yes, I know) when it started going downhill.

        Chrome still doesn’t have the ability to set a shortcut for “switch to previous tab”, have to use a plugin for that 🙄

      • w00@feddit.de
        3·
        11 months ago

        Try Vivaldi, it’s made by former opera Devs from before opera became Chinese

        • dan@upvote.au
          5·
          11 months ago

          It’s good but I don’t want to contribute to the HTML/Webkit/Blink monoculture. We need multiple browser engines in the world. That’s one of the reasons I use Firefox.

      • petrescatraian@libranet.de
        1·
        11 months ago

        @dan They did try to bring back some stuff in the later years, like an integrated RSS feed reader. But Firefox is just way better than anything else overall. Including the fact that it comes from an organization that puts privacy further up in the list of priorities.

        @BaroqueInMind

  • dan@upvote.au
    30·
    11 months ago

    Opera today is essentially totally different to the innovative browser from the 2000s. I miss the old Opera.

    Vivaldi is trying to become its replacement, but I don’t really want to contribute to the KHTML/Blink/Webkit monoculture.

  • Celediel@slrpnk.net
    6·
    11 months ago

    I quit using Opera when it became just another Chromium fork, and never looked back. It seems like that was an excellent decision, lol.

    • kfet@lemmy.ca
      10·
      11 months ago

      I have different experience with Vivaldi, been using it for years, and it’s amazing.

      • DaleGribble88@programming.devEnglish
        8·
        11 months ago

        Vivaldi has been my browser of choice for years as well. Fantastic product in my experience. I’ve sadly forced myself to start using firefox and librewolf in an attempt support alternatives to chromium based browsers. Firefox and co. are fine, but I’m still reaching for features and options from vivaldi that just don’t exist in firefox without a maze of incompatible and poorly maintained plugins.

        • Aelis@beehaw.org
          2·
          11 months ago

          No need to support firefox, they get 1/2 a billion dollars each year from Google :D

          We’re at a point where most of the browsers are just rotten sadly, now it’s just a question of what is less worse than the others. With the coming of manifest v3 I don’t know if Vivaldi will still be worth it to me, I hope it will because even if I’d really like to use librewolf or another good fork of firefox…it’s just so lackluster compared to what Vivaldi offers, especially since I use a lot of its features.

          • Scary le Poo@beehaw.org
            6·
            11 months ago

            Stop with this bullshit. They aren’t influenced by Google in any ways that actually matter. Google is effectively paying to make sure that there is a competitor.

            • Aelis@beehaw.org
              1·
              11 months ago

              I never said that, actually just said exactly what you did : that Google pay them to still have a competitor.
              But that’s a big problem, because that make them competitors just in name, and using their browser won’t change that sadly. Another problem is the lucrative part of Mozilla that have made a number of bad decisions over the years with firefox, and are partly to blame as to how it fell out of favour.

              To be clear Firefox is far from being the worst browser out there, it’s not what I am saying, and it can have forks, we can also edit most of the crap out of it wich is great. But it would be silly to consider it a spotless software run by saints. That’s all I am saying.

              I would even go back to it or (better) a fork of it if I could get the features I use in Vivaldi without using countless and broken (or non savy) extentions, because I’d still find that better than using something based on chromium (even if there is a dedicated and seemingly good intended team behind it). But I would still not find it ideal, not without that lucrative side of Mozilla hanging onto firefox and that damn Google pay.

    • petrescatraian@libranet.de
      1·
      11 months ago

      @BarrierWithAshes Just use Firefox. There’s plenty of stuff that can be achieved just through add-ons and switching various settings in about:config. Only thing that’s missing is an integrated free VPN, but I guess there are better alternatives anyway if you want more privacy online.

      @corbin

      • BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social
        2·
        11 months ago

        I use LibreWolf and various Chromium clones. It’s good enough for me for now. I refuse to support Mozilla in any way past that.

  • MNByChoice@midwest.social
    4·
    11 months ago

    I don’t like that Opera now has an AI integrated.

    I don’t know that this article is compelling. Their main source of information was discredited in the article.

      • MNByChoice@midwest.social
        6·
        11 months ago

        I am, perhaps, too judgemental.

        Since Hindenburg directly profits from the company’s decline in stock, it’s not an impartial source of information, but the company’s other reports into companies like Nikola have held up to scrutiny.

        • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.oneEnglish
          5·
          11 months ago

          I wouldn’t consider them that terribly biased personally; as their livelihood (Money) is put into shorting whatever company is being reported on (Mouth). Literally they put their money where their mouth is…and if they make a horrible mistake in reading a company going under and doing really shady things; they’re going to basically go out themselves pretty quickly and lose a lot of credibility in the process.

          Is it maybe a little scummy? Yes. But as they’re calling out scumbags anyways; it looks more like a legitimate application of “taking a scammer to know a scammer”. It’s better that they’re legitimately profiting from calling out companies that are cheating everyone and reporting on it to benefit the public in the process.

        • corbin@infosec.pubOP
          4·
          11 months ago

          Yeah, Hindenburg isn’t like a team of journalists or anything, but if they cited other sources in their report and it seems to be pretty accurate. If there were big issues then Opera should have been able to point them out, and that didn’t happen.