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Opera Max Turns To Nagware, Now Prompts Users To Re-enable It Every 12 Hours (androidpolice.com) 121

Posted by msmash from the nagware dept.
Opera has long advertised its free VPN service Opera Max to customers. But it looks like, the company isn't pleased with users keeping its servers at work at all times. Over the last few days, according to a report on AndroidPolice, Opera Max has introduced ads on its apps, as well as links to sponsored apps. But the company is not done yet. It now requires a user to go back to the app and "add time" to the free VPN service every 12 hours if they wish to continue the service. Adding time doesn't cost anything, but it will subject users to an ad on each occasion.
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Opera Max Turns To Nagware, Now Prompts Users To Re-enable It Every 12 Hours More

Opera Max Turns To Nagware, Now Prompts Users To Re-enable It Every 12 Hours

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  • Not unreasonable (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I don't think that's unreasonable. It's a free service. They should've known better than to think they could afford to process that much traffic, but something like this was expected. At least they're not actively charging for it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Exactly. This will be the first step. When it still costs too much to run, they will make you add time every 4 hours and start nagging you to get a paid account for better performance and to remove adds. Next, you won't be able to find the free account signup anymore and their robots.txt will prevent it from being indexed too. Then, due to pressure from governments and copyright lobbies, they will shut down. It is a natural progression for this type of thing and they were fools if they didn't know it going

  • Free (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If something is free, you're not the customer, you're the product.

    What a wealth of personal info.

    • Re:Free (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2016 @09:59AM (#53191925)

      If something is free, you're not the customer, you're the product.

      What a wealth of personal info.

      No, in any such arrangement you're trading specific pieces of knowledge about your habits as part or all of a price. Those of us outside the tinfoil community prefer to send Google our search terms as indicators of personal interest over paying the $150/month that the service costs to provide.

      • "trading specific pieces of knowledge about your habits" - which is nice in principle, though the ability to extrapoloate, and connect it to other data that may already exist about you, can make this rather more than that in practice.

        • though the ability to extrapoloate, and connect it to other data that may already exist about you, can make this rather more than that in practice

          That's precisely why it's valuable enough to be used as barter. Otherwise no one would be interested in it and we're back to paying for services we take for granted.

      • . Those of us outside the tinfoil community prefer to send Google our search terms as indicators of personal interest over paying the $150/month that the service costs to provide.

        Or you could use DuckDuckGo.com, Startpage.com, or Disconnect.me for free. Note, none of those track you. Also, one of those wraps Google, another Bing and the third can produce better results sometimes.

        And if it would cost $150 to provide, that means that they're making over $150 some other way. Which means higher costs to me s

        • "Or you could use DuckDuckGo.com, Startpage.com, or Disconnect.me for free. Note, none of those track you. Also, one of those wraps Google, another Bing and the third can produce better results sometimes."

          And if you do use one of those alternative search engines, what assurance do you have, exactly, that its business model is not something other than the Anonymous Billionaire Providing Service Out of Sheer Altruism you are assuming? I would rather deal with a company that has an openly declared , SEC-regist

          • None claim to be altruistic (and DDG displays its owner's name somewhere.) They all claim not to track you. I know StartPage has 3rd party auditors, not sure about the others.

            But disconnect.me asks for cash. StartPage shows ads tailored to your search but not you. I don't recall how DDG makes money, but the guy who started it is a serial entrepreneur who knows that to make any headway into search, even getting people to try his product, he needs an edge (like privacy.).

            I know StartPage (probably the oth

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        Google ad revenue : $75 billion in 2015
        GMail active users : 1 billion

        So it the service was paid for instead of being ad supported, it would have cost about $75/year, or $6.25/month.
        That's a very rough estimate and it assumes every user would pay instead of giving up their data and receiving ads. But it is very far from $150/month.

  • If you don't like it, don't use it or get your own (Score:5, Insightful)

    by StandardCell ( 589682 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2016 @09:46AM (#53191819)
    Seriously, this stuff isn't free. It costs real money to run a VPN service and you get a whole day's worth of browsing for the cost of viewing one ad. You can still use the Opera browser without nagware if you don't use the VPN.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Ranbot ( 2648297 )

      Seriously, this stuff isn't free. It costs real money to run a VPN service and you get a whole day's worth of browsing for the cost of viewing one ad. You can still use the Opera browser without nagware if you don't use the VPN.

      When useless mobile apps, like Candy Crush, force users to watch an ad every 2 minutes no one cares. When an optional service with real value shows users an ad once every 12 hours it's nagware. /internet logic

      • Both are properly called adware. Nagware is shareware that nags you to pay to register it.

      • Re:If you don't like it, don't use it or get your (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2016 @02:23PM (#53193857)

        I get the difference. Candy Crush puts interstitial ads up when you take certain actions. Opera lets you schedule your ad anytime you want. But that means that the ad isn't incidental to using the product, you have to go out of your way to select it. Which means that Candy Crush feels like it has ads, whereas Opera feels like you have to opt into using it (and also see an ad.) Opera's way is definitely objectively better for the consumer, but can be spun in a worse way.

    • How much money do they get for one ad impression? Like, one or five or ten cents? Let's go with the high end of the range, ten cents.

      Does Opera offer their service for twenty cents per day (two ads)? If not, they're screwing their customers.

      I see this all the time: I get to choose between a service with ads that might add up to half a dollar a day, or I can pay $99 a month for the service. That's bull. That's a way of making sure every single one of your customers is a chump -- either a chump willing to loo

  • it has to come from somewhere or someone.

  • Remember, only apps can app apps! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is just Appera making their app even appier, unlike LUDDITE software!

    Apps!
  • I used it during and after it emerged from beta and even back then it would bother you to "top up" to continue using it. I uninstalled it soon after. I don't know what it does these days but services like Tunnelbear give you a small-ish amount of data for free per month but you can pay for unlimited use if you want. Maybe Opera should do likewise.

  • Opera has "long advertised" its what?

  • Opera. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2016 @10:54AM (#53192293) Homepage

    Opera browser was ad-supported but also pay-for to remove them before - what? - 3.5?

    It was removed because it just discouraged users and made only a pittance. In fact, the browser went free and then produced its best and most popular versions. Oh, and they had Opera Turbo which is basically the same VPN thing for all that time.

    It's only when the development team was sacked many years later that they threw the browser away, made a similar-looking (but severely lacking) Chrome-clone, and then wondered why everyone disappeared and made old-Opera-clones that they feel the need to ad-support it again in an era where "ads" = things to annoy users with because who cares about them, so long as we get 1/1000th of a penny?

    Glad to see that I made the right decision to not continue with Opera past version 12.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If I read a news report that Opera 12 was being open sourced, I think I'd spontaneously orgasm.

    • Objectively, I think the no-ads Opera versions were failures. they gained only a small amount of marketshare while losing a lot of revenue. If it'd bumped Opera to 5-10% marketshare it would've been a clear success, but going from 1% to 1.5% or whatever it was isn't worth giving up the revenue. Later Opera versions were technically more popular yes, because they were free without ads, but they weren't really ahead of the innovation curve for long after that.

      Opera was actually the last desktop software I eve

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )
      The ads are only for people using the VPN integrated in it. What browser do you use now?

  • But that will; come. First, someone will analyze the protocol used and develop some plugin or app that automatically calls the "extend my service for 12 hours" every 11 hours. And as a response to that they will be "forced" to make it a payed service.

  • TANSTAAFL ... duh!!

  • Everytime that ad pops up, I remember to stretch my legs, get some coffee, take a pee, order some pizza.

    Not necessarily in that order, though.

  • A Chinese company, Qihoo, purchased Opera. More ads are showing up in Opera Mini on Android, even with the built in ad-blocker on. If you use any Qihoo product, ads are now a way of life, slightly annoying, but tolerable. 360 Total Security, a decent free anti-virus program, has had "offers" all along.

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