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Comment by weberc2 | Hacker News Reader

I've been using Opera since Mozilla shoved out Eich and Google fired Damore. As far as I know, the Opera folks aren't particularly authoritarian. Opera works pretty well; I actually like it better than Chrome.

EDIT: I wonder if the downvoters are more upset that I use Opera or that I'm critical of authoritarianism?

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Opera can’t be considered trustworthy as of this event (cribbed from Wikipedia):

On 18 July 2016, Opera announced it had sold its browser, privacy and performance apps, and its name to Golden Brick Capital Private Equity Fund I Limited Partnership (a consortium of Chinese investors including Qihoo 360) for an amount of $600 million USD.

Why does a new owner make them untrustworthy?!

Because it's impossible to run a >$600 million US-Dollar business in China without involvement from the Chinese government. The same government that heavily spies on its citizens and blocks access to the internet with a huge firewall.

Can you elaborate on the concern? Not challenging your point, just trying to understand how concerned I should be.

Not a downvoter, but I wouldn't change browser over those things, the browser is too important to any real computer nerd. An alternative browser would have to be open source, maintained by a major group, and have functionality that even the big two only achieve via third party addons.

That's not a reason not to use a fork though, I'm looking at Waterfox, but need to assess if I can trust the devs.

It's a huge annoyance, Mozilla seemed to have kept their ethics intact even with all the Google money but this is the last of several marketing blunders that to me show controlling forces on Firefox have sold out to commercialism over ideals.

Ideally Firefox will root out whoever has lead this current thrust towards selling out users.

You're right, the browser is so vital, that's why I've stuck with FF through technical issues in the past. I really don't trust them now.

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