
Why Opera thrives in Europe’s last dictatorship - riordan
http://qz.com/28895/why-opera-thrives-in-europes-last-dictatorship/
======
threedaymonk
I don't know how they achieve it, but this Quartz website works perfectly in
Lynx, yet all I get in Chrome is a blank screen and a loading spinner.

Sorry for being off topic, but it infuriates me when people screw up the web
this much.

~~~
pavanky
Works fine. Chromium on Arch.

~~~
kanja
Same config, does not work for me.

------
beatgammit
I really wish Opera was more popular. It's a really good browser and helps to
drive the open web, which is ironic since it's closed source.

I use it nearly every day, and it's really annoying how some major websites (
_cough_ Google Apps) don't support it. It is very competitive on html5test.com
(beats out Firefox) and works really well for everyday browsing.

You don't have to be socialist to use Opera...

------
polymatter
summary: People in Belarus saved money when they used Opera's features to
"strip out images and other bandwidth-gobbling web extras" due to the way the
state telco billed them.

~~~
klibertp
Every browser has an option to disable loading of images, javascript, flash or
java. At least Firefox and Opera have them for sure, I suspect others do too,
because why not?

Actually, Opera can use a (Opera operated) proxy to scale the images down,
compress html, css and js. This feature is called "Opera Turbo", I think, and
is unique to Opera (browser and company) - at least as a built in from the
start.

The second reason is Opera Mini, which can run on "dumbphones" and is a fast,
modern browser, which can use "Opera Turbo" too. People there didn't have
access to newer hardware, stuck with "dumbphones" were essentially abandoned
by everyone else - only Opera was there for them.

Third reason was Opera's good support for cryptography, which is nice to have
when you know every byte you send is archived and can (and will be) used
against you if you happen to become inconvenient.

So, to summarize: your summary is inaccurate, misleading and not necessary.

~~~
anonymfus
>Every browser has an option to disable loading of images, javascript, flash
or java. At least Firefox and Opera have them for sure, I suspect others do
too, because why not?

1\. Opera has also option to show only cached images and option to load
selected image.

2\. Chrome has not option to disable images.

~~~
polynomial
Opera has been light years beyond the other browsers in caching for so long it
seems they'll never catch up.

It did have a hard time recovering from the early backlash against it for not
being open-source, belying the involvement and contributions of Opera
engineers to the open standards web.

~~~
derleth
And the ads. Don't forget how long it showed you ads.

~~~
klibertp
How long? I never saw (edit: don't remember seeing - as it was showing ads
then) ads in Opera and I was using it from about 2002(3?) to 2011 when I
switched to Chrome. I seem to remember that back then Opera's main selling
point was that it was insanely fast and had small memory footprint while
having many new and useful features.

So I think it showed the ads for about 6 years? Just curious.

~~~
derleth
According to Wikipedia:

> Up to this point, Opera was trialware and had to be purchased after the
> trial period ended. Version 5.0 (released in 2000) saw the end of this
> requirement. Instead, Opera became ad-sponsored, displaying advertisements
> to users who had not paid for it.[25] Later versions of Opera gave the user
> the choice of seeing banner ads or targeted text advertisements from Google.
> With version 8.5 (released in 2005) the advertisements were removed entirely
> and primary financial support for the browser came through revenue from
> Google (which is by contract Opera's default search engine).

So 2000 through 2005.

This seems to be borne out by the more specialized History of the Opera web
browser page:

> Opera 5, released on December 6, 2000, was the first version which was ad-
> sponsored instead of having a trial period.

[snip]

> Version 8.5 was released on September 20, 2005, Opera announced that their
> browser would be available free of charge and without advertisements from
> then onwards, although the company still sells support contracts.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Opera_web_browse...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Opera_web_browser)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_%28web_browser%29>

~~~
klibertp
Ok, so either I have forgotten or wasn't using Opera that early (but that
seems improbable). This bit:

> Later versions of Opera gave the user the choice of seeing banner ads or
> targeted text advertisements from Google

is suspicious - I remember that when Opera _was_ showing ads it had an ad bar
above (or below) address bar. So maybe I got served ads but didn't consider
them as such.

Or maybe I just idealize my youth :)

------
Surio
Disclaimer: Long time Opera user and probably an Opera browser fan.

I have been using Opera since its "ad-supported" days. It was bundled with one
of those PC magazines that gave out free software/shareware for the bandwidth
challenged in those days and fell in love instantly. Opera is probably the
most configurable, hackable and feature-full browser out there up to this day,
and I still find things to configure and customise to this day (now on Opera
12.10). Opera also provides the user with an option to install itself as a
portable version which I found very cool. It is also very light on PC
resources (YMMV -- anecdata)

I also find it very annoying that a looot of websites do not support this
browser.... at all despite its being on par (if not better) in most if not all
browser tests (I heard they lagged behind on the most recent ones).

Opera Mini is blazingly fast on not-so-smartphones (used it on the Nokia ASHA
series) and Android smartphones as well (anecdata -- my experience). It beats
out Nokia's own browser which incidentally has adopted the "Turbo"
architecture for its own browsers.

IMO the article does great disservice to Opera's technical/technological
advanced capabilities by ingnoring all of those and solely focussing the
article around socialism and dictatorship and internet speeds ( [almost]
creating a straw-man in the process). Booo!

------
anonymfus
Also Opera's Turbo can be used to bypass internet censorship.

~~~
demetrius
Probably, but it itself is blocked when something important occurs, e.g. it
was blocked (as well as Opera Mini servers) during the unrest after the
elections.

------
sheraz
I remember using opera mini on my blackberry and 2G tmobile connection in NYC
a few years ago. It was definitely the best thing on BB, and I remember it
worked amazingly well.

And for those wondering about Opera's business model, see here [1].

[1] - [http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2011/01/03/how-does-
ope...](http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2011/01/03/how-does-opera-make-
money-aka-our-most-asked-question-ever)

------
rplnt
I wrote comments on this topic several times and I think the reason why Opera
is popular in Centra/Eastern Europe is quite simple. I'll rewrite it once
again:

It was the best browser out there for a long time without a doubt. While in
west people used IE since it was free, people in east didn't care whether
software is paid or not, they just used cracked versions[sidenote 1]. If copy
of Office was about as expensive as your monthly income, it's understandable.
So it was normal there, and not really frowned upon. Even when FF came out,
the Opera was much better[sidenote 2]. But Firefox erupted in the west and as
it evolved it found its way to the east. Opera stayed popular in many
countries because a) it was still great b) people were used to it c) it still
spread by a word of mouth. But as the "Internet" hit new generations, Firefox
slowly took over. Fast forward to Chrome and its never ending multi-billion
campaign. Ads in TV, radio. Billboards and posters all over the place. Banners
(or even feature blocking) on most visited sites out there ( _.google.com/_ ,
youtube.com, ...). All that with comeback of ie5+ only sites (now for chrome
of course) meant that Opera's user base slowly evaporates.

It's quite sad really, especially when I see it here on HN since Chrome is
dumb-dumb browser meant for people who use the Internet for the first time
while Opera is probably the most configurable, hackable and feature-full
browser out there. Not better (when you consider the extensibility of
FF/Chrome) but one would think it would appeal to "hackers".

PS: Of course the "turbo" aspect played its role but I think it was just a
side thin on desktop.

PPS: Firefox had unreasonable amount of money in advertising as well, but I
think it mostly hurt IE, not Opera.

sidenote 1: Cracked software meant an easy way to spread viruses. One of the
biggest/best antivirus vendors that still exists are from that place and era
(Avast, AVG, ESET, Kaspersky).

sidenote 2: If Opera had become free before Firefox was released, I think it
would have dominated the west market as well (at that time at least).

~~~
webwanderings
Tried shifting to Opera from FF recently (last time I was trying few years
ago, there was no suitable Adblocker available). Backed out this time as well
because it has no official support for moving your history (which I would not
want to loose). Makes no sense why would Opera not make it simple for people
to move.

------
krzyk
My problem with Opera was (when I tried it once more, 2-3 years ago) is that
it get really slow with many open tabs ( > 20) I frequently have 50 or more
open tabs and the only browser that handles is well is Firefox.

~~~
dmpk2k
Strange. I too am a member of the 50+ tab club, but this is why I've been
using Opera for years (Firefox as well, but for dev tools). The difference
between the two is stark, so I'm surprised we've reached the opposite
conclusion.

------
antihero
Was this article written by bloody McCarthy?

