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Comment by syoc | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why people instantly go to the uninstall step when we are talking about the Chinese acquiring information, but the USG is fine. At least you most likely don't live in the country obtaining potentially incriminating information (if that is your worry).

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It's a good question, and deserves a good answer:

The new Opera, i.e. every Opera after Version 15, is a Chromium fork.

That means it carries with it all the small and large behaviors like: Auto-updating. It also has literally no upside over using Opera v12, which still works fine for most things nowadays; and mostly no upsides over using just Chrome, or any other flavor of Chromium.

As such, getting rid of it after this acquisition gives only upside for the safety-conscious user.

One upside is that it is still actively developed. Opera 12.x is not and should not be used other than for testing at this point.

5000 steps back and 3 forward as a token to convert the headlines from "Opera ASA throws away browser" to "Opera ASA releases new browser" is not an upside, it's still a dirty lie. And Opera 12 is fine, has even recently received an SSL upgrade.

Well, I do not use Chrome for the same reason. I am also in the process of migrating from Google to services in countries that respect privacy and do not share data with governments without a warrant.

Do you mind listing alternative services that you are looking at?

For me, DuckDuckGo replaced Google, FastMail replaced Gmail and SpiderOak replaced Google Drive. Some trade-offs, but nothing too painful.

I looked at SpiderOak...but their mobile apps really need some work..that's the only thing holding me back. How's your experience using SpiderOak?

ProtonMail looks interesting as well. They recently added support for custom domains.

I use DuckDuckGo for search, Kolabnow for email, OwnCloud (owncube.com) for files, calendar, contacts.

Unfortunately, I still use Google Services on my phone to use Google Play store for apps. I see no viable alternative for now.

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