Is Facebook Going To Buy Opera? 226
New submitter x0d writes with this excerpt from the L.A. Times: "The Facebook spending spree may be continuing as a new report says the social networking giant might be looking to buy Norwegian company Opera Software. Now fully under the microscope of Wall Street as well as Main Street investors, Facebook is trying to solve its mobile monetizing problems and has been gobbling up various companies in recent months to increase its presence in the world of smartphones."
Nice one (Score:5, Interesting)
The opera mobile browser works by offloading a lot of work to a server run by opera. This would give facebook access to everything which goes through every mobile opera browser.
Re:Nice one (Score:4, Interesting)
Only if you turn on Turbo mode. It's off by default.
But yes it would suck ass if Facebook bought Opera. Opera Mobile is the first thing I install on any smartphone. The desktop version of Opera sucks but the Mobile version is the best browser for any mobile device.
Warning to Fastmail users (Score:5, Interesting)
Opera owns Fastmail. Do you want Facebook to own your email?
I hope not (Score:4, Interesting)
Opera is the best browser out there. I don't trust Chrome not to report data about me to Google, and if Facebook buys Opera I wouldn't trust it not to report my browsing data to Facebook. I will have to move back to the mess that is Firefox
Re:Opera & P2P (Score:1, Interesting)
The difference between Unite and Facebook, other than privacy, is that Unite is useful.
I really hope not. (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that having Facebook sized development money can be nothing but a great thing for the progress of the browser, but, I'm more concerned with the direction of this development. Also some very obvious concerns with the use of turbo-mode to help FB aggregate more of the world's information...
...I'm going to vote 'I really hope not' on this one.
I wouldn't put it past Opera to allow it (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't used Opera in a good long while*, and I've never heard of the mentioned source site Pocket-lint, but after the damning parting words of von Tetzchner [slashdot.org], I wouldn't put it past Opera to allow let Facebook take them.
Nice knowin' ya, Oppy.
*Actually I did a few times a month or two ago for some SVG testing; otherwise I've barely touched it, and I'll be uninstalling it now just in case the probable turns out true.
Better targets (Score:3, Interesting)
There are better targets than a once-great browser. Opera is no longer, no matter what their home page says, the fastest browser in the business.
Twitter, for example. A Facebook takeover of the company will ensure render comatose any hopes G+ has of winning any marketshare.
Another is Yahoo. Too big? I'm pretty sure Yahoo's stockholders would agree to a stock swap that would leave hot-young CEO Zuckerberg in control. Facebook can use some of whatever remains of Yahoo's search technology.
Re:Warning to Fastmail users (Score:3, Interesting)
As a paying member of Fastmail.fm, I'll be the first to cancel if Facebook takes ownership.
Re:Better targets (Score:4, Interesting)
There are better targets than a once-great browser. Opera is no longer, no matter what their home page says, the fastest browser in the business.
It's not really about fast, though piss poor performance would be a problem. It's about not having to develop a brand new mobile app/Facebook-content-delivery-app. Opera has 'mobile' and 'mini'. One of which (mini?) does all it's work on the Opera servers. This would let Facebook see everything you do ... and I mean everything. That fits perfectly with their current mission of harvesting anything and everything they can about their users.
Possibly adios... (Score:5, Interesting)
Damn. I've been using Opera for several years now. If it comes under the thumb of Facebook, I'll jump ship. I don't want those fuckers backdooring themselves into everything I do online.
Likewise. Opera has been my main browser for more than a decade, although my wife generally uses Firefox. Luckily, I've also been using Chromium, and consider it an acceptable replacement: not quite as good with privacy settings, but slightly more compatible with weird web sites. If Opera becomes part of Facebook, I'll drop it on principle (all Facebook IPs are already blocked by my router to inhibit unwanted tracking).
Re:Rockmelt (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, Opera may be closed-source. But they deserve huge respect.
They invented tons of things we take for granted nowadays. Tabs, proper zooming, user scripts/styles, separate search field, mouse guestures (incl. rocker), pop-up blocking, privacy mode, built-in bittorrent client, you name it. And they haven’t stopped. I consider Unite a key feature that will become essential.
They also saved us from having to use IE6 in the dark ages after Netscape was murdered.
And it was the fastest browser for a loooong time. (Basically from the start up until Chrome forced Firefox to become faster.)
And Oprea Mobile is the rare case of a mobile browser that doesn’t suck.
If they had offered a Firefox-like Add-on system and done a similar marketing (think: Firefox logo), they would be the most popular browser instead today.
Re:Rockmelt (Score:3, Interesting)
Frequent crashes? etc? I suggest there's something wrong with your system. Other than crashes in snapshots, the released versions have always been solid.
Just because it doesn't crash for you doesn't mean that it's "solid". One not so nice thing about Opera lately is that it 1) likes to crash if you have profiles and other user data left over from a past version (their tech support always recommends wiping all your settings whenever you upgrade - WTF?); and 2) it likes to crash on certain specific websites due to bugs in their renderer or JS engine - so you won't see those crashes unless you frequent those sites.
You're pretty much talking out of your ass.
Because my observations do not agree with your preconceptions?
I was using Opera as my primary browser since 5.x times, so, no, I'm not talking out of my ass. I wish I could keep using it, but as it is, I have reluctantly moved on to Chrome because I couldn't keep pretending that Opera is still the best choice.