
Who are the Chinese tech companies that just bought Opera? - williswee
https://www.techinasia.com/chinese-tech-companies-bought-opera
======
alexdong
This is a sad news, especially to those of us who have been in the industry
long enough to remember what kind of company Qihoo is.

> Qihoo has often been surrounded by rumors of foul play, fraud, and dirty
> tricks. Its apps have been banned from the iTunes store before

Well, the same team started by building Malware, tons of them, and then
hijacked computers to manipulate Alexa ranking or DDoS competitors websites.

Then they turned around and started a new company to built anti-Malware
software that had, and still probably has, an enormous market share, which
gives them more machines to sell adverts.

RIP, Opera.

------
FrankyHollywood
Very sad indeed, have been an Opera user since the very beginning. When IE's
only feature was having bookmarks, Opera had tabbed browsing, mouse gestures,
etc. It was a great browser designed by great people, not by some corporate
design policy.

But I guess not everybody sees that :)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Quotient_%28IQ%29...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Quotient_%28IQ%29_and_Browser_Usage)

~~~
baldfat
I switched to Vivaldi Browser [https://vivaldi.com/](https://vivaldi.com/)

It is founded by Opera Software co-founder and former CEO Jon Stephenson von
Tetzchner and Tatsuki Tomita. Vivaldi aims to revive the old, popular features
of Opera 12 and introduce new, more innovative ones.

It was released on Linux day one. Runs V8 and Blink and you can use Chrome
Extensions. Been a good ride so far and they in Beta 2 currently.

~~~
jld89
This looks good! Thanks for sharing. Are there extensions that don't run on
it?

The main extensions I'm interested in would be Hola VPN and Privacy Badger.

~~~
lqdc13
Hola VPN is really bad for privacy as it allows them to track which sites you
go to. I'm guessing you're trying to mitigate that with Privacy Badger? That
won't work as you are routed through them anyway.

one of the sources: [http://adios-hola.org/](http://adios-hola.org/)

------
pmontra
Very sad news. Because of the untrustworthiness of the buyers I'll have to
find another browser for my phone. Any suggestions?

I started googling around and found an addon for Firefox
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/text-
reflow/r...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/text-
reflow/reviews/) but it's looks imperfect.

Apparently text reflow won't make its way into Firefox
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710298](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710298)

It seems that maybe Lightning does it. I'll try it out.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=acr.browser.ba...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=acr.browser.barebones&hl=en)

Edit: added link to Lightning

~~~
baldfat
I have used Dolphin for years and ditched Opera a long time ago.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.mgeek.Tun...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.mgeek.TunnyBrowser&hl=en)

~~~
pmontra
I went the other way for two reasons:

1) Dolphin uses the stock browser's rendering engine, which is not updated as
often as an external one. For older devices is not updated at all. I remember
two or three updates in an year on my tablet, which went from 4.4.2 to 5.0.2.
Opera is updated in sync with Chromium/Chrome.

2) Opera has text reflow and that made me ditch Dolphin instantaneously. I
checked it again now and Dolphin still doesn't have text reflow.

~~~
random_ind_dude
Dolphin does have text reflow. There is an option that says 'Auto-fit pages'
in advanced settings, which is the same thing as text reflow. That option is
the only reason I'm using Dolphin as my mobile browser. I used to use Opera
before, but after they switched to Blink, an annoying bug that reloads a tab
when it is selected, became a deal breaker for me.

~~~
pmontra
Doplhin's text reflow works on some sites but doesn't work in HN. If I zoom a
page of comments I have to scroll right and left, which defeats the purpose of
zooming. Do you experience the same behavior?

~~~
random_ind_dude
It doesn't work for me either. The fault lies with HN. I think the reason text
reflow doesn't work on HN is that HN styles its content using old-fashioned
HTML tables instead of DIVs.

~~~
pmontra
Yes, it's the table layout but Opera manages to reflow it so I'd say that HN
is a difficult customer but Dolphin is not doing a good job at managing it.

------
lqdc13
Might want to uninstall Opera Mini if you have it installed. It MitMs all your
traffic.

So now that traffic might go to China to a company you may not trust.

~~~
oddsignals
Also, depending on how far back Opera have logs stored, you might want to
uninstall it several months/years ago.

------
leni536
Otter Browser [1] is a FOSS clone of the old opera. It seems to have active
development, last time I tried it (more than a year ago) it was pretty decent.

[1] [https://otter-browser.org/](https://otter-browser.org/)

------
Piskvorrr
Eh. It was dead since they painted an Opera logo on a Webkit wrapper (a sad
day indeed). This is just an episode of Walking dead.

------
giancarlostoro
Worth noting a fork of Opera known as Vivladi exists.

[https://vivaldi.net/en-US/](https://vivaldi.net/en-US/)

It's focused on power users however.

~~~
skrebbel
It's not a fork, it's a new chromium-based browser.

~~~
baldfat
The new Opera was based on Chromium after version 12.

~~~
dragonwriter
Yes, and Chrome has been based on Chromium since forever; like Vivaldi, its
also not a fork of Opera. Being Chromium based gives it something in common
with Opera, but doesn't make it a fork of Opera.

~~~
digi_owl
If writing a web engine from scratch would not have taken a ungodly amount of
time and effort, they would likely have done so. That said, the behavior of
Vivaldi is closer to Opera 12 than Opera 13 and later is. Basically a bunch of
cloudcookoolander UX designers got the reigns of Opera, and has since slowly
been crawling back towards what Opera 12 was capable of.

~~~
dragonwriter
It sounds to me that you are saying that Vivaldi is (approximately) a
Chromium-based _clone_ of Opera 12, not a _fork_.

~~~
baldfat
Symantics of clone and fork dealing with a closed program that was sold for
billions seems kind of pointless.

------
Aoyagi
Well, I've been waiting for the "final nail to the coffin" and I got a
shank...

Oh well, at least there are alternatives, like SeaMonkey, Vivaldi, Otter... or
I might just start using Pale Moon.

...as a secondary browser to Opera 12.

------
spirit555
First thing I did when I saw the news was take Opera and drag it to the trash
bin. I barely used and never really liked their browser after the Chromium
switch anyways.

------
moonshinefe
I'd imagine that's the end of the already 4th-5th place desktop browser. Kind
of a shame, but not super surprising these days.

edit: added 'desktop' qualifier

------
Scottn1
I used Opera as my daily browser for years, up to the 12.x release. It was my
little "browser that could" vs the big guys. Chrome was gaining huge ground
but I kept with Opera as sort of the underdog and knowing the Presto engine
was just as good at the time.

Then the switch to it being a skinned Chrome. That was tough for me to swallow
as it always was on the back of my mind. I still gave it random tries for days
at a time as the new blink/chrome skin, but a discovery had turned me off for
good.

Over a year ago, I noticed outgoing traffic to 1-2 IP's in addition to the URL
I was visiting. Turns out it was to Opera's malware scanning and to Akamai.
Opera and Akamai had info on every web page you visit and there was NO way to
turn this off. You can turn this off in Chrome simply in the settings, but
Opera purposely spent time removing that ability from Chromium. By-default
URL/malware scanning is probably a good thing for the masses, but I did not
need it and also felt it was a privacy violation being it was also involving
Akamai.

I raised this issue up SEVERAL times with Opera through the desktop blog
comments as well as survey's with them. To this day I don't think they even
acknowledged the posts I made and just ignored the issue. I recall, I think,
one Opera employee saying they will look into it for future versions, but
every new release I saw nothing.

Before the switch off Presto, Opera would quickly work on resolving bug
comments as well as community feedback. I felt the major difference once it
went to being Google's b&tch (even making it very difficult for some time in
changing off of Google as default search from address bar), that Opera no
longer became a browser for the fans and somewhat of the underdog you could
cheer for to a cold, commercial sellout. On their own path adding features no
one asked/wanted yet several times reverting them back. Much energy spent on
throwing stuff out to see what sticks with Speed Dial, theme, bookmarks, but
nothing at all in bringing back the features and customization that made Opera
12.x great.

This latest news though is the FINAL straw for me being sold to shady Chinese
companies with KNOWN attachment to malware and tracking in whatever they put
out. I already had issues with the URL scanning mentioned above and having my
info sent to Opera servers was one thing. I will not even let Chinese Opera
touch my PC going forward. Opera is good as dead and I will not even look at
it anymore.

RIP Opera: 2/11/2016

FF is our last hope in a browser that still worries about privacy to an extent
and is still pretty customizable. For daily use I will use Edge and FF
equally.

~~~
gsnedders
> You can turn this off in Chrome simply in the settings, but Opera purposely
> spent time removing that ability from Chromium.

FWIW, the browser UI, as well as things like malware scanning, is entirely
Opera's own code, and isn't forked from Chromium, so it wasn't "purposely
removed" rather just never implemented…

