

Opera parodies Google's Chrome speed tests mercilessly (video) - Ghost_Noname
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/28/opera-parodies-googles-chrome-speed-tests-mercilessly-video/

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SkyMarshal
'mercilessly'

That's modern media for ya - any opportunity for hyperbole, confrontation,
and/or controversy. Even when it's not. It wasn't merciless, it was just
funny.

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foljs
Yes, because old media weren't keen on hyperbole...

Say, the Hearst papers...

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seldo
The Chrome "speed tests" really were ridiculous. Oh, so when connected to the
world's most gigantic internet connection on a computer that isn't doing
anything else, your browser can render pages very quickly? Well, gosh. Are you
going to show any other browsers in this video for comparison? No? Oh well
then. I will remember to definitely browse the web using your browser instead
of the giant ear full of paint/tesla coil combination I was using before,
since that's the only thing you've shown it to be faster than.

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adammichaelc
Dude, it's marketing. It's meant to paint a strong picture and create an
association between Chrome and speed, which I think it accomplishes well --
since Chrome <i>is</i> in fact faster it seems like an honest ad. Do you
disagree? Or is your beef just that the ad is unscientific? An ad featuring a
double-blind study could probably be made to be interesting, kind of like the
blind Coke vs. Pepsi taste-tests... but that's not what they made.

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endtime
>since Chrome _is_ in fact faster it seems like an honest ad.

Opera has a faster JS engine than Chrome.

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jsnyder
Wow, I was about to call BS on this comment, then I went to grab a recent
Opera build... it's not really that much faster, but it does edge out Chrome
on my machine with SunSpider.

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endtime
Kudos for taking the time to check. :)

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qw
Kudos from me as well. Not enough people take the time to test their
assumptions. I guess it says something about the relative quality of comments,
when you are surprised when someone takes the time to actually do some minimal
research.

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mildweed
I welcome the Browser Promo Video Wars.

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dawgr
When an exception is thrown in Opera, crashing it, can it potentially be
exploited? Or is it only exploitable when you get a windows error?

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grandalf
I'm rooting for Opera as an underdog, but I can't honestly say I'd ever choose
to use it over Chrome (or even Firefox).

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endtime
As an Opear user, I'm curious - why? It's performant (well, maybe not on
memory usage, but I have plenty of memory), highly configurable, has a lot of
features, and looks pretty.

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grandalf
I think for me it was that when I first tried it it was adware and didn't
support javascript. Also, the linux version I tried hadn't received much UI
polish.

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endtime
I can't speak for the Linux version, but the rest of what you're saying is a
bit like not wanting to use Windows 7 because you didn't like Windows 98.
Opera has come a long way...

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grandalf
That is true. I downloaded it the other day but in my 30 seconds of usage
didn't see any reason to switch to it from Chrome. Do you have any thoughts on
reasons to switch?

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endtime
I like that I can completely rebuild the UI however I want. I also find tab
thumbnails to be a nice productivity boost, totally worth the vertical space
they take up (to enable them, just drag the bottom of the tab bar down). The
native mouse gesture implementation seems snappier than the Firefox plugin I
tried (haven't tried in Chrome).

tl;dr: Features and configurability.

That said, Chrome has its own strengths; it's a good browser, and it's the one
I use on the rare occasion that something doesn't play nice with Opera.

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ez77
I think I'm missing a previous video to get it, right? Anyone care to share
it? Thanks.

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sp332
The second video on that page _is_ the original.

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ez77
Thanks... I still have issues watching video on my mobile, and it shows =S.

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orblivion
I wanted to laugh at it.

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coderdude
It's a shame you didn't find it humorous. I laughed loud enough to startle my
nearby co-workers. I mean come on... the potatoes just kind of roll into the
bucket. I wasn't sure what to expect from the commercial. It could be that
because I thought the video was going to be serious I was caught off-guard.
I've seen that potato ad a hundred times on Hulu so it made for a good laugh.

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orblivion
Well I saw it here for the first time, and the link title said "parody", so I
didn't expect it to be serious. It was silly but somehow not funny.

