Stop Using Opera Browser and Opera GX | Hacker News Reader

Stop Using Opera Browser and Opera GX

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58 pointscdme44 comments

Use Firefox or Safari. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

Don't use Chrome or Chrome-based (Blink) browsers.

I have a lot of thoughts on how Firefox fumbled the bag, by the way. They desperately need new leadership.

Until I believe that Mozilla management are committed to making a great browser other than something they use to make money for other things I am out.

Firefox issues I have

  - profiles have no indicator on the taskbar so it isn't easy to see which is which when using multiple profiles at the same time (I don't want to have to use multiple Firefox versions just to know which profile is which on the taskbar).
  - when clicking an external link in another app I want it to open in whichever profile I used last, like chromium browsers
  - No pwa's (I don't want to use an external app)
  - Compact mode being unsupported (when watching media a pwa shows the biggest video view, Firefox non compact the least)
  - Ads being incorporated
  - Ads for Mozilla products

Things I like

  - uBO
  - Recommended extensions so I can have some faith they are checked to be legit.

Firefox just feels like a browser stuck in the past.

Currently using Brave. I don't like or use the crypto crap or most of their other big features (talk, vpn). I don't love any of our current browser options.

Edit: formatting

I think a lot of your complaints are kinda myopic but symptoms of a larger problem. Why isn't Firefox trying to create an enthusiast's browser - or even plugins for that? Why did Firefox try to make their own phone os? Why isn't there Electron But With Gecko? Why isn't Servo being productized? Why do they need so much upper management?

I get that they're doing services in an attempt to gain revenue, but trying to implement something like BAT (without branding it as a currency) would go a long way. Or even a short way (I think BAT kinda sucks), but at least it's something besides _Pocket_!

Same here - I would absolutely love to use Firefox, but it just doesn't cut it for me. My grievances to add to your list:

- No tab groups

- No Vertical tabs

And no, the extensions providing these just aren't good enough (they don't feel native, they don't sync across devices, and I need to hack to get rid of the tob tab bar)

I used opera between 1999 ~ 2008. It was great and tons of features ahead anything else. It was also super fast – it was my favourite browser for older and underpowered systems. It is such a shame they did not open source the browser. I bet many features would be much more present in nowadays browser life. Just to name one, visual tab previews (currently only widespread in MS Edge) or the semantic relationship toolbar (reading <meta rel> tags) would still be amazing today.

Can't agree more, but my opinion is sentiment-biased. I was a paying customer back when Opera had ads-infested free version (and these were some huge banners on low-resolution screens) and an ads-free paid version. Browser tabs were a truly magnificent invention and made Opera stand out.

Shame that the company wasn't able to keep up. They had some really fresh ideas on improving web browsing and it didn't seem like throwing money at walls to check where it sticks. At the time.

Wish Apple never killed the Windows version of Safari in 2012. The last 10 years might have played out differently

Apple is about as good at writing software for Windows as Microsoft is at writing software for macOS. I say this in the most derogatory way possible.

Office on MacOS has more features and works better than it's windows equivalent. Some of the best software from microsoft is probably on the mac.

I would actually give Microsoft more credit. Most of what annoys me about Excel on a Mac is because it’s old, like maybe the oldest piece of software still running on the Mac that was written for the Mac and I’m including Apple’s own software.

Apple’s software on Windows with the exception of iTunes (which did get worse with 7, but still mostly held up for the remainder of my Windows-using days which didn’t go much further than that) was riddled with arrogance and ran poorly. QuickTime which was a standout piece of software on the Mac was a goddamned joke that nobody wanted to deal with on Windows.

>Firefox, Safari, and Vivaldi are all better alternatives, and Vivaldi is built by some former Opera employees, including former Opera Software CEO Jon von Tetzchner.

The (summary) message seems to be: Don't use Opera because "The company is chasing trends and extracting the most money possible from its declining users".

But there are no links that would truly show the extent of the alleged unethical behavior. There are no links to court-decisions.

What about unethical behaviors by other browser-providers? Isn't Google also "extracting the most money possible from its users"? And Microsoft?

Apple's Safari is provided by the company which takes 30% cut from products sold in its app-store and prevents its users from using anything but their app-store.

Firefox also has been "chasing trends". Pocket, VPN, Relay, OS, and others. Maybe their conception of "trending" is different from Opera's one, and maybe more focused on what they understand of how a browser can be made more useful and the toolset around it. Or not. In any case, the trendy picks by Opera are shadier, and the next one can be harmful for most of their users.

Firefox needs to have other income than the google search money, that's hardly surprising.

So did Opera, if you read the article you would have a clue. They described the Opera Mini moneymaker in the third paragraph already.

An interesting piece of information from the article is this:

"Hindenburg is an investment firm that researches publicly-traded companies and shorts their stocks if they find sufficient evidence of investor fraud before releasing its report. Since Hindenburg directly profits from the company's decline in stock, it's not an impartial source of information "

The OS, BTW, does relatively well, after it has been discontinued by Mozilla.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS#Forks

> The (summary) message seems to be: Don't use Opera because "The company is chasing trends and extracting the most money possible from its declining users".

Your summary is dumb. Here's why, and I quote from the article you claim to summarize:

> Hindenburg alleged that when the Opera browser continued losing users (due to competition from Google and Apple), the company shifted gears to building mobile apps that provided predatory short-term loans. The interest rates on those loans ranged from 365-876% per year, and loan terms from 7-29 days. Opera also falsely advertised longer loan terms and lower interest rates in the app descriptions, because the Google Play Store had rules against predatory loan services.

> The loan apps specifically targeted customers in Kenya, India, and Nigeria.

Nobody read the links anymore, just chatting??

Also, everybody check out Firefox, not corporate boring Chrome!

> "Your summary is dumb."

I didn't provide a summary of the article, just quoted from it's Conclusion (== Summary) -section verbatim:

"The company is chasing trends and extracting the most money possible from its declining users"

For me that is not a good enough reason to stop using Opera.

Also the Hindenburg report is from 2020. Not very trendy. If Opera really is more "evil" company than say Google, Apple and Microsoft I would think there would by now be more information about the "alleged" misbehaviors.

Maybe they mended their ways, because of that report?

I'm using Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Edge. Chrome and Edge seem to give me more adds than Opera. I think it's good there are more browser-choices regardless of what Hindenburg-report said in 2020.

Certainly it is good to bring up reports of alleged unethical behavior by corporations. But Opera is a very small company compared to Google, Apple and Microsoft. Trying to bash them now because of a report that came out in 2020 just seems a bit odd.

Here's another quote from the article which seems over the top to me:

"You should not, under any circumstances, use Opera Browser or any of its derivatives."

Why not even derivatives? Under any circumstances?

You can be unethical while not being prosecuted. "Law" and "morality" should not be conflated.

And there's tons of details in the linked report – specifically about their short-term loan apps. And looking up "CashBean" (of which there's a screenshot) shows they had their license revoked by the Indian government. That sort of thing is usually not a good sign.

> What about unethical behaviors by other browser-providers?

I'm not aware of them operating predatory loan schemes in developing nations.

> I'm not aware of them operating predatory loan schemes in developing nations.

Is Opera doing it currently?

I don't think it matters because all of this was very recent under the same ownership. But if you think it does matter then enter a few of those names in your favourite search engine and find out.

What is this whataboutism? The article is about Opera, not other browsers. And its focus is on its unethical practices, the kinds of which are illegal in many countries (you may want to look up on how horrendously evil microlending apps are).

And the article does give a reasonable of instances and sources on their antics. Hell, the most popular activist short seller in the world targeted it. What more do you want?

Opera was great, before they switched the core to Chromium, which absolute suck ass. Now Vivaldi is doing everything better than the original Opera. Tried so many others but none has a bigger setting menu than Vivaldi which means they all lose.

Obviously everyone has their favorite and browser discussions inevitably turn into flamewars, but TFA is true: at least don't choose Opera. That's really sad considering its history.

My favorite is currently Brave, once I turn off the cryptocurrency stuff. I used to prefer Firefox, but it isn't stable for me under significant load; perhaps leaky JS in one of my hundred(s) of open tabs makes things slow to a crawl. I wish that vanilla de-googled chromium like ungoogled or similar would adopt the same upgraded sync functionality that's built into Brave, but for now Brave works fine and I can use all my regular open-source Chrome plugins.

If you really need Chromium why not Vivaldi? No need to turn off 'cryptocurrency stuff' there.

Tried Vivaldi multiple times. Does not stick.

Some of the issues I saw are

If you use multiple profiles at the same time there is no way to distinguish them on the task bar.

I also couldn’t find a tab handling method I like.

They also don’t seem to release on a regular cadence which makes me wonder how they are doing security updates.

Their UI is not open source.

Also, no source available (only a tarball of their chromium fork) so we'll just have to believe them...

In the network analysis by privacyguide or somesuch Vivaldi was among the chattiest browsers.

The way Opera GX was advertised, on shady sites with an automatically downloading executable installer in a popup, already made it abundantly clear that this is something that needs to be avoided at all cost.

You won't catch me using Opera browser or any of it's software. Opera the company misleads people and garbage of a company.

I don’t care what you say, it’s still the most comfortable browser due to QoL improvements that the decaying old chrome/firefox could never dream of adding. Like the more convenient file chooser screen for example. Plus it just looks and feels more futuristic looking not stuck in 2011 like chrome/firefox(neither which are truly customizable. Try achieving the sharp no-border radius tab look in chrome without editing the source each time..good luck)

Anyone know if we can resurrect the presto engine ? I’de bet there are people here who would use a new presto based browser, am I right ?

The source isn't available and purely business-wise Opera would be fools to create a competitor by releasing it. You or I might make that decision regardless for the public good, "business be damned", but I don't see an investor company doing that.

And who knows if it's actually any good. It was around form the mid-90s to 2013, and I'm betting the "wtf per minute" is pretty high. Probably better invest in Servo or that thing the SerenityOS people are working on.

The presto source did leak a while back, not that it would be legal to fork.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/opera-presto-...

Is the only reason you guys support Firefox the amount of Chrome users? that is absolutely the dumbest reason to do so

Honestly have never found a reason to switch from Safari, I trust Apple to make reasonable decisions about my data so I've never had to worry about it outside of normal cybersecurity hygiene (randomized passwords, enabling advanced data protection, etc).

I have no idea what people are smoking if they think any company that gives you a free product and makes money on your data would have your privacy as their best interest. I'm not saying they're straight up committing fraud, I'm talking about stuff like Opera collecting this to use for a future business endeavor. It's why I'll never buy an Android phone, Apple is expensive but at the end of the day Apple is already profitable without data collection, but most other companies can't say that, so they can never truly have your best interests in mind when it's a matter of survival.

Apple does have plenty of data collection. You shouldn't delude yourself into thinking they don't do it. But they are, to first approximation, the least bad among all mainstream choices.

I don’t trust Apple. Looking at the company’s modus operandi in China - and Hong Kong - tells me more than enough. And by extension, the treatment of Jon Stewart. And I write this in Safari on my iPad. So no, I don’t hate Apple.

Opera was my browser when I entered the web for the first time in 2001 (the version was 6.x - the only browser with tabs IIRC), and I used it exclusively until late 2010 when Chrome took over. I'm really sad to see Opera in a situation like this.

Not me getting tear-eyed because I fondly remember Opera Mini as my first mobile browser on Symbian

Not seeing a strong technical argument here. Ethical, sure. But headlines urging urgent ceasing use of a browser should have substantial reasoning behind it.

Thoughts on alternatives? Open sourced ones?

I currently use DuckDuck’s browser and wanted to try Brave but it seems to want to push crypto everywhere.

Looooooong time ago. Who is still using Opera?? Are you nuts?

Also, WebKit is trashy KHTML.

I’m not worried about the last 1000 people online still using Opera.

I feel using Chrome is just as, if not more problematic.

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