Opera Unite is a Hail Mary

snydeq writes "Rather than view it as a game-changer, Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Opera Unite as a Hail Mary bid for Opera to stay in the game. After all, in an era when even vending machines have Web servers on them, a Web server on the Web browser isn't really that groundbreaking. What Opera is attempting is to 'reintermediate' the Internet — 'directly linking people's personal computers together' by making them sign up for an account on Opera's servers and ensuring all of their exchanges pass through Opera's servers first. 'That's an effective way to get around technical difficulties like NAT firewalls, but more important, it makes Opera the intermediary in your social interactions — not Facebook, not MySpace, but Opera,' McAllister writes. In other words, Opera hopes to use social networking as a Trojan horse to put traditional apps back in charge."

Epic Fail

[TheMiddleRoad]

What the hell were they thinking? "We'll do something that people won't understand and won't like if they do understand."

Re:Web Developers

[Jellybob]

Yes, just imagine.

It would be just like we had a copy of Apache installed on our laptop, but without having to lug a server around with us.

Oh... wait... hang on a minute.

Re:Not to mention security, bandwidth, etc.

[ShieldW0lf]

If this works, it will be pulling us out of a hole that was dug over many years. The ISPs who use IPV4 dynamic IPs were sabotaging the network. The DNS organizations who decided to make having an entry in the registry something that costs an unreasonable amount of money were sabotaging the network. Microsofts decision to cripple the web server on every consumer version of their OS ever released were sabotaging the network. The cloud computing initiatives are ALL about sabotaging the network. So are the social networking sites.

It's a cynical view to say that Opera are attempting to set themselves up as intermediaries so they can leverage that control. It might be true. But it is also true that the network was designed to work the way Opera Unite is pushing it to work, and it doesn't because the organizations who were originally entrusted with the task screwed everything up and are already leveraging that control. If everything wasn't already so screwed up in the first place, Opera's opportunity wouldn't exist.

Pffft... trojan horse

[Stumbles]

Yeah right. If Microsoft had done this first it would have been hailed as revolutionary.

The little things matter more

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera has always tried to inovate, they have an excellent product, with lots of good features and I couldn't believe how fast the pages loaded in comparrison to firefox. Its the little things though that destroy its market share and preventing it from gaining more. In opera on my hardware middle click doesn't map to scrolling or even as any default middle button action. It never has in all the years it has been in development. I am always impressed then disappointed . I know if I wanted to I could probably find the problem, but how many of your non-tech friends would try to fix it - I know my DAD would just say " This doesn't work, where is my old browser?"

Re:Not to mention security, bandwidth, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention maybe I don't want to use Opera as a browser? Why not make this a separate product?

Rumours of their death are continually exaggerated

[johnnysaucepn]

Yep, I'll bet that a profitable browser company that continues to expand and make more money year after year is definitely in trouble. People have been predicting the death of Opera Software for over a decade now, and yet they're still making huge waves in the internet market. When will people start to realise that you don't need to be the most popular product on the market to be successful? The browser market is absolutely huge, remember. Even 1% of the entire market is millions of satisfied users. The only thing that matters is that open standards are implemented, then we all win.

Re:Bad summary

[Korey Kaczor]

I hope not. Opera is the best desktop web browser and I'd hate to see it go.

Re:Bad summary

[mpapet]

1. That was a horrible summary. Maybe the point is to generate some flamebait?
2. Every case you give to justify Opera's weakness are free-ish. As in something else (not the browser) is generating the revenue. Opera has to generate revenue through their browser and they have managed to stay in business despite other companies giving away different browsers. That suggests Opera is delivering way more value than the other free browsers. Good for them.
3. This idea will be copied because it is useful. It is a very long time in coming. It's a great feature that neither Apple or Microsoft can implement easily because they want their marriage to the media distributors to be a happy one.
4. To borrow from another post, hopefully consumers will latch onto this one to see the one of the grander purposes built into the Internet. Many powerful parties (ex. media distributors) would like nothing more than to maintain a one-way sh!t pipe of the current, common Internet experience. Consumers deserve to have all of the features of the Internet available to them.

No, I don't use Opera. I never particularly cared for it.

Re:Not to mention security, bandwidth, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

oh my god, then install another browser and use that when you want to....

I thought we were against cloud computing?

[AmigaHeretic]

Is this Slashdot? Is this the Slashdot that use to have every user complaining about having their files and information being held in "The Cloud"? The place where people use to complain about the security and privacy of their pictures if they were on Flickr,their Email and their Docs if they were all located on Googles servers??

What happen to all the 'get of my lawn' types that said, "I'll never put my information in the 'Cloud'. They can take my physical hard drives when they pry them from my cold dead fingers!!"

Now you are provided with (one of many) alternatives to have your files on YOUR computer AND the advantages of them being in the cloud (like you can access your files no matter what location your at and be able to share files with other people)

This seems like a case of you can't please any of the people any of the time kinda thing.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:SupraBrowser=Opera Unite+Google Wave

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the first way to get users for a web-related tool is probably to have a frickin website, and no, the sourceforge project page does not count. You need a shiny website with explanation of what it is, screenshots, FAQ, tutorials, and so on.

Re:Bad summary

[rs79]

"Opera is is in trouble."

Keep telling yourself that enough and eventually you'll believe it.

This doesn't have to be a zero sum game. Opera doesn't have to lose for your favorite browser to win, and we all benefit from a rich array of alternative browsers. I don't want any browser, not even my favorite, be the "one true browser".

Opera contines to grow just fine and innovate so that firefox has something to get good ideas from and is a nice companion to google.

If only one of these browsers attains ubiquity, well, we had that before, it was called "Windows". Let's not do that again.

I also notice those who are most critical of Opera know the least about it and don't actually use it.

Re:Not to mention security, bandwidth, etc.

[nine-times]

Well certainly when you look at the service being provided, I'm not sure why either DNS registration or SSL certs are so expensive. They're really just hosting a relatively small database with relatively light usage. There's the facade of security, but it's not as though registrars and CAs actually investigate people to verify identity (at least in most cases).

The only upside to increased prices is it provides some kind of limit to domain squatting and such. If domain registration were free, then every single possible domain would probably be taken by now.

Re:Not to mention security, bandwidth, etc.

[A Friendly Troll]

Kinda sad, because during the days of IE5 Opera really had a chance to grab some market, but blew it with a pay browser and even worse ad supported. They never have been able how to make money with Opera. Oh well, maybe when they go under the next bunch that buys them will know how to make a profit.

Opera is making tons of money. Their browser is on the Wii, their Mini browser is the most popular mobile browser, their browser is on airplanes, their browser (regular Mobile) is on millions of phones. They are not going under - they are making more money than ever.

Also, like I said here [slashdot.org], Opera has above 30% and close to 40% market share in some countries.

Finally, they are a Norwegian company. *AA won't come knocking at their door.

Who the fuck modded you insightful for such trolling?!