Chinese Consortium's $1.24B Bid To Acquire Opera Software Fails, $600M Deal Agreed Instead (tech.eu) 85
The $1.24 billion takeover of Opera Software by a Chinese consortium of internet firms has failed, Opera said on Monday. The deal did not receive the required regulatory approval in time of a final deadline. But they will be doing some business. The consortium will now acquire only certain parts of Opera's consumer business, including its mobile and desktop browsers, for $600 million on an enterprise value basis. Tech.eu reports: What will not be acquired by the consortium is: Opera Mediaworks, Apps & Games and Opera TV. In 2015, Opera says these business units combined delivered revenues of $467 million. The company will report second-quarter results on August 31, 2016.
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So, a little clarification. The issue isn't secret hardware waiting to pop your security. It's a bad piece of debug routines that should never have been left in a kernel that went out in the wild. Don't run that kernel, there are no issues.
Re:Does This Worry Anyone Else? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm saying there is a massive difference between backdoor hardware and a backdoor in a software component. OP claimed the first was going on, which is clearly bunk.
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I don't think any of the top browsers are trustworthy, so this just seems par for the course.
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Are you dense? It's an American saying, not a Norwegian nor a Chinese one.
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Remember it's not over until the fat lady sings
The browsers are not fat, just really bloated - too many carbs, I guess.
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LOL
Butthead
'Regulatory approval' LOL
WTF should there be any need for 'regulatory approval'?
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It's an old bug. If you have a paid Slashdot subscription, one of the perks is being able to see and comment on stories a little while before they show up on the front page for non-subscribers. Sometimes they show up that way for everybody.
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Re:Insane (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would anyone pay that much for Opera?
Why would anyone pay $600M for something with annual revenues of $460M? Best hopes of 5 years to recover the investment, but more likely 10 or more years? That makes no sense.
Because recovering your entire investment in 5-10 years is considered a very good outcome? You do realize that the stock market returns as a whole over the long term are in the ballpark of 10% per annum, right?
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Ah not really. That number is thrown around by "fancial advisors" to get people to invest with them. It depends on the asset classes one chooses [marketwatch.com] and the years you look at. (The linked article also assumes one bought right after the Crash of '29) And that doesn't mean it will continue. And much of those returns were from the end of WWII to about 2000. Things are slowing down and with the Baby Boomers retiring and selling their holdings to buy their Harley Davidson motorcycles and Land Yachts, expect returns to be in the mid-single digits. The rate the financial planners I know are using 5% for retirement planning.
Ah, no. The stock market consists of a single asset class: stocks.
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Flat out wrong. ETFs are traded on the stock market and are not themselves stocks.
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10% compounded interest in the market would pay off much faster. If it requires more than 7.5 years to even break even on this it's worse than 10% compounded interest in the market which would double your principal in 87 months.
Re:Insane (Score:5, Informative)
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Revenue is only part of a company's overall value.
There is the Name Recognition.
There is the customer base
There is the physical assets building employees etc...
There are existing contracts in place...
Also the point when a company buys another one, they feel that they can somehow do better than the current owner to make it more profitable. That is why they bid more than just the value of the company. Because you need to make the current owners an offer that will make it worth their while. Why offer 1 year
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Not to mention a wealth of metrics and the strong possibility of inserting data/privacy-sucking code into Opera.
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Why would anyone pay that much for Opera?
Why would anyone pay $600M for something with annual revenues of $460M? Best hopes of 5 years to recover the investment, but more likely 10 or more years? That makes no sense.
I think you read the article backwards. The stuff NOT sold somehow generates $460 mill. However, it seems like an $600M investment that would likely generate $920M over two years might not be so bad. I guess that comes down to how much of that revenue is profit.
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Why would anyone pay that much for Opera?
Why would anyone pay $600M for something with annual revenues of $460M? Best hopes of 5 years to recover the investment, but more likely 10 or more years? That makes no sense.
It's actually pretty popular in Europe and I'd imagine other parts of the East. I'm sure that's what is being taken into account here.
Never did like Opera... (Score:1)
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Sadly, I agree. I'd already jumped ship to Vivaldi when it first came out early last year, but have given it up recently for stability and profile-syncing reason...but I didn't go back to Opera, I'm on FF for now, only until Vivaldi matures a bit more. The news about being bought by a Chinese consortium did it for me -__-
Opera Mini's deceptive security (Score:3)
I loaded Opera Mini on a Jellybean device, and tested it against the best-known SSL/TLS Scanner [ssllabs.com].
Initial tests passed with flying colors, and indicated that I was using the "Presto" rendering engine, which routes traffic through Opera's server farm for compression.
However, after I reduced the "data savings" parameter in settings from "extreme" to "high," Opera Mini then FAILS with flying colors, because it's using the Jellybean Webkit directly (that lacks TLS1.2, bundles bad ciphers, etc.).
This is deceptive.
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routes traffic through Opera's server farm for compression.
That doesn't bother you?
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I was actually testing several dozen Android browsers for a project. No, I'd never use a browser engaging in this (Amazon).
Great browser spoiled? (Score:3)
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Don't get me wrong, I won't touch Opera with a 10 foot pole either but the acquisition didn't change that.
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Are you sure the development will be moved to China? Otherwise it will still be a Norwegian company operating under Norwegian law.
Sorry for not encouraging the xenophobia...
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Too bad. I only recently discovered Opera on Android, and have been using it ever since because it has an in-built ad-blocker.
Try using Dolphin [google.com]. It has a built-in popup blocker, and supports DDG as its default search engine.
Avoid Dolphin browser too, (Score:2)
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From 27 Apr., 2016: "Don't use Dolphin browser in incognito mode" https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4gnb2b/dont_use_dolphin_browser_in_incognito_mode/ [reddit.com] From 25 Oct., 2011: "WARNING: Dolphin's collection of your browsing history": http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1319529 [xda-developers.com]
Although I appreciate the citations, citing limitations of a version that is 5 years old is kind of like complaining about an unpatched issue in Windows XP.
Dolphin stopped forwarding URLs five versions ago. And that "play history" file doesn't even exist on my version.
In other words, I will continue to use Dolphin. It's limitations are minor compared to Chrome/Google tracking and Firefox/Mozilla change-the-best-browser-out-there-into-Chromeshit.
Oh well, buh'bye Opera... (Score:2)
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Opera always had its share of compatibility problems with sites, anyway....
In my usage, on Android, Opera worked very well, and was cleaner and easier to use (far better UI) than Firefox on Android.
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... an uninterested foreign country...
I disagree with that premise.
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Well then, how about this? As a US citizen, if I had to choose between being spied on by China and being spied on by the US, I'd prefer it be China. China has little power to harm me directly, where the US has immense power to do so.
Of course, it's a false dichotomy, as we can be sure that we're being spied on by both.
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Man, for the days before Obama when people could assume the US government was generally on their side.
I don't know if anyone actually believes that this changed with Obama... The US government was actively against its citizens long before 2008.
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Man, for the days before Obama when people could assume the US government was generally on their side
Yeah, 'cause George W Bush and the USA PATRIOT Act really gave me a warm fuzzy feeling about the government...
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The Chinese are a disinterested party? That's a great joke.
I just uninstalled Opera from my smartphone (Score:2)
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I was going to vote this up (using vivaldi right now, it's a great browser!) but decided to clear up a misconception instead:
Vivaldi uses blink, not presto, unfortunately. There are no current browsers using presto.
It makes me sad Opera has slid so far. Probably smart of them to sell.
Wait a minute... (Score:1)
Opera actually had a side to their business that wasn't a browser (that frankly went down the tubes years ago)?
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When Opera ASA switched their desktop browser's rendering engine to Blink in 2012 - they were an Ads & Services company. 600M seems highly overpriced if all the consortium is getting is Opera's Blink based Android|Mac|Windows|Linux browser.
If and when Firefox completes its addon|extension overhaul to be "Chrome-compatible", it's quite possible we wont even have a single browser that allows the end-user to be in control.
Opera 12 (maybe even all the way back to version 7 or 8) has UserScript that can com
What about their free VPN? (Score:2)
I just started using their free VPN app on my phone, now I have real second thoughts about that...
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Sigh ...Opera uninstalled ... (Score:2)
Thanks for the warning.
Don't ask yourself if you are paranoid.
Ask yourself if you are paranoid enough.
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I hope you don't connect to websites located in the US or allow data transfers over US, GB, Canadian, Australian or New Zealand networks.
PS don't drink the water - protect your precious body fluids!
As a former user and fan of Opera... (Score:2)
...i honestly couldn't care less. This is just another nail in the coffin; good riddance.
Opera died when, for some unfathomable reason, they decided to rewrite their browser as a Chromium skin. The original Opera browser was a fantastic product.
Nowadays i use Chromium myself while i eagerly wait for the first stable release of Vivaldi.
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I agree. I strongly dislike the Chromium UI, and have been getting increasingly dismayed at the number of browsers that have decided to become a clone of it.
Speed Dial (Score:2)
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I think you missed the part where some number of the old opera guys started a new browser called Vivaldi. Opera wasn't really the same opera since a little while. It's not that surprising they're selling it I guess.
Vivaldi was still pretty "beta" until recently but now it's getting pretty stable and include a lot of must have feature from old opera. Vivaldi is pretty much the replacement for old opera, not the browser being sold. It already has a lot, if not most, features from old opera (including speed di