Hacker News Reader

Comment by ontoillogical | Hacker News Reader

> * 2015 revenue now forecast lower at $600 mln to $618 mln

How does Opera generate revenue? Ads?

Opera went on an acquisition spree over the last few years to buy and stitch together what is now the largest independent mobile ad network. Pretty much went from nothing 2 years ago to the vast majority of their revenues this year.

Which is to say the Opera most people think about, the browser, isn't where the money is being made. In fact, Opera MediaWorks, their mobile ad network, isn't really connected to the browser in any way, and the business is structured as a nearly separate entity.

that was the shift they did when they gave up browsers (i.e. become chromium skin makers).

it was a crazy shift. they always made some money with ads. so they decided to cut the middle man, but they forgot a) they didn't have the eyeballs anymore, b) they know nothing about being a network. yeah they bought companies, but probably the clients didn't stick around otherwise people here would at least have heard they are a publisher now.

Opera is far from a "chromium skin maker". In addition to features like autosizing modes for mobile, Opera developers are heavily involved in specs as well as the entire Chromium stack:

https://blink.lc/blink/log/?qt=author&q=opera

https://blink.lc/chromium/log/?qt=author&q=opera

They have an incredible team.

It's a little ironic for such news to end up here, because I'm pretty sure Opera (mobile) is the only one of the major browsers still supporting text reflow, which is why I use it for reading HN which doesn't have an official mobile site version.

I too use Opera Mobile for its text reflow feature. A feature sorely lacking in (AFAIK) every single other mobile browser.

Firefox has text reflow on zoom.

But it isn't even comparable. I've tried switching to Firefox, but the text reflow sucks badly.

It is unmaintained and broken.

every browser HAD text reflow at least around 2010~2012.

for whatever reason, they all removed it. Android stock had text reflow (and inverted color night reading). then on 2.3.3, gone. now they don't even have a stock browser. they ship with chrome, installed as a system app.

firefox started with awesome text reflow. then i think on fenec v16 they screwed up everything when moving to the Reader feature just to clone safari, safari for f* sake...

The best for mobile as far as ICan tell: http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/

But you can't comment or reply with it? I like this a lot more (still no solution for comments though): http://hn.premii.com/

Hey thanks!

Funny thing is, text reflow worked perfectly in every WebView browser on Android under Google broke it: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62378

The nice Opera Mobile reflow works only on Android, maybe some other smaller systems. But not on iOS and Windows Mobile. Opera is the only mobile browser I can tolerate.

I think I should do a video capture how nicely pretty much any site works in this browser. Unless the text is burned into an image, you can pretty much read it all without horizontal scrolling.

This feature is badly needed in Mobile Safari, Firefox and Chrome.

I really hope Opera can continue to support this amazing browser.

They have an incredible team but their browser is a skin for chromium compared to what it was before they dropped their engine (shortly after the founder left due to a board "too quarterly oriented".

A couple years later the new opera is till far beyond what it was and it seems they're not even trying to fix this while vivaldi on the other hand is driven by a vision and has made much more progress in a more timely manner.

I've been using opera as my main browser since they removed ads in 2005, today I'm still using presto based opera with no plan to switch to the blink based version of opera because many of the features that made opera are missing and are not coming back which make the "chromium skin" designation a reality.

so how badly does your presto opera fail the ssl client test?

It fails not at all.

Result of https://www.howsmytls.com/

    Version: Good
    Ephemeral Key Support: Good
    Session Ticket Support: Improvable
    TLS Compression: Good
    BEAST Vulnerability: Good
    Insecure Cipher Suites: Good

Result of https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewMyClient.html

    Protocol Support: Your user agent has good protocol support.
    Logjam Vulnerability (Experimental): Your user agent is not vulnerable.
    FREAK Vulnerability: Your user agent is not vulnerable.
    POODLE Vulnerability: Your user agent is not vulnerable.
    Cipher Suites (in order of preference): TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256 (0x6b)   Forward Secrecy ←←←←← listed first, other ciphers elided
    Protocol Details: Session tickets   No ←←←←← feature is labelled in yellow, all other details are labelled in black or green, elided

If outdated TLS ever becomes a pressing concern, it's easy to put a proxy in front of the browser.

I've used Opera since 2004 and the current Chromium based Opera is barely even a shadow of what it once was. It took them well over a year just to implement bookmark functionality, because they didn't feel it needed it and then realized it did.

Even the newer Vivaldi browser also based on Chromium (started by the former CEO of Opera) has more classic features (tab stacking, partial key rebinding, sidebar) than the official Opera and started far later after the Opera Chromium reboot.

Is the team incredible? Perhaps, but not in the way a long time Opera user would desire. I'd be happy if it had even half of the features of Opera 12, but as it is now, it's around 10-15%. Thankfully, Opera 12 (Presto) with some tweaking works pretty well still after being discontinued around 2 years ago.

this was the main point of my comment.

before they were a browser maker. everyone knew them for that. the work from their team shone.

now they are skin makers. and a unknown ad network.

the work of both their awesome browser devs and ad servers are mostly unknown to anyone. it all goes to google fame in the end. or do you think people outside of this very small circle of browser developers read release notes and credits?! heck you had to link to a source tracker.

nobody knows what is the opera browser anymore, because, i was one of them, you use opera because of feature X and Y. then you install Opera 13 over opera 12, and... you have a trimmed down version of chrome! you don't have your loved feature X. Nor feature Y. and some features from chrome haven't even made it to opera 13! so you just go to chrome and forever give up feature X and Y (not sure why so many people do that), or you move forward to firefox and have incomplete versions of X and Y.

I doubt opera kept any user after 13.

> http://www.operasoftware.com/content/download/6622/222390/ve...

From their 2015 1Q finical report, P.10 says most of their revenue comes from Mobile Advertising.

> Opera Mobile Store will replace Nokia Store as the default app store for Nokia feature phones, Symbian and Nokia X smartphones, following an agreement between Opera Software and Microsoft.

> The announcement follows a separate agreement, announced in August 2014, which will see Opera become the default browser on Nokia-branded phones, including Series 30+, Series 40, Asha and Nokia X handsets.

http://www.operasoftware.com/press/releases/mobile/release-2...

Just like all other browsers, they make money from Google and other search engines. Think of every time your browser redirects you to Google or Bing search ... They earn quite a lot from this.

> How does Opera generate revenue? Ads?

That would appear to be the case. FTA:

> OSLO, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Online advertising and browser firm Opera Sofware is considering a sale of the company… [emphasis added]

afaik they have partnership with Google regarding mobile app distribution.

Anyways, it seems that the company didn't do that much last few years to grow really. I cant say I heard much of Opera lately besides Bemobi purchase.

I was wondering the same thing. That's a lot higher than I expected.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com