Opera boycott | Hacker News Reader

Opera boycott

jcxp.net

5 pointsyread12 comments

I think this is my first comment here, so please excuse me if it is too plain but

This seems like a typical flamebait. Nothing of value, nothing to think about, nothing but childish hate (or maybe simply attention/backlink whoring).

I wonder if he will arrange a boycott of almost all European telecoms companies that make use of local loop unbundling: the principle is the same as they have to allow their competitors to use their last mile infrastructure.

I agree, it's definitely bait of some description or another. I don't think it offers "nothing to think about" though.

The article is right in that Opera is last in browser market share. Would it be pushing as hard against Microsoft (and for as long; I wrote about Opera when they were saying exactly the same thing 2 years ago) if Opera was in say, 2nd?

Probably not. I don't necessarily agree with the law suits against Microsoft right now over in Europe - honestly, most of the tech-savvy users have moved away from IE, and the ones who haven't probably wouldn't know what they were working with if you gave them something else anyhow. Either that, or IE is still used in an enterprise environment, in which case the IT specialists probably just don't want to field tech support calls from people who are trying to use the 'e' but can't find it.

That said, I did dislike the way MS dealt with competition back in the Netscape days - they have become considerably less 'evil', but a lot of that old animosity remains. I think it will eventually die off, but until then I think MS has an uphill battle with a lot of hackers out there. Plus, Microsoft bashing is something of a sport amongst Linux users like myself - I doubt I'll use Win7 just because I prefer the feature set and interface of Linux, but that doesn't mean that I necessarily thing it is a bad product (won't stop me from bashing WinME/Vista, though :-).

The EU courts, though - I think they are just trying to keep big American companies in check, give them a wake up call telling them that they can't think that the EU market is going to be business as usual. Intel is getting the same message, from what I've read.

> Opera is last in browser market share.

Only if you stop the list as soon as you get to Opera

Sorry, I should have been more specific.

I was talking about the 'major' players. IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. (Browsers that have a reach of 5% or more in all the sites I manage.) This is discounting mobile browsers, IE derivatives, the likes of Konqueror, etc.

May I suggest flagging the post?

Reminded me I should download Opera 10. Thanks.

This probably should begin with http://www.jcxp.net/news.php?newsid=2801 since the linked article doesn't provide enough context.

Baning MS from bundling IE with their OS is very hypocritical and great distraction move by EU bureaucracy.

They should open the tenders instead of making secret deals and make publicly available all the deals they have made with MS in the first place. That would limit corruption where business and government meets and give chance to alternatives and progress.

The whole anti-Opera campain is just more distraction from the real issue.

This post raises far more questions than answers. such as:

Why is Opera's action so egregious? Competitors often take a stand on legal cases relating to each other.

And why among his list of "great alternative browsers" is IE first?

Now if only everyone was tech savvy we wouldn't have these problems. Microsoft would actually have to make a really good browser rather than leveraging it's near monopoly on the OS to deliver an average browser to the masses.

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