Opera Browser and Opera GX are bloated web browsers, and the company behind them has tried to cover up its controversies.
  • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
    3·
    11 个月前

    TL;DR company shady

    The main 3 points seem to be: China-owned, predatory loan applications, and spreading themselves across too many concept/trend browser spinoffs. Honestly this is kinda old news and won’t stop anyone I know from using the thing. You can’t just say they’re “probably” harvesting your data for “nefarious” reasons and expect people to all jump to Firefox (as nice as that may be).

    • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
      2·
      11 个月前

      I’d add a fourth main point: they have a documented history of creating browsers and then abandoning them, leaving any unaware users without security updates indefinitely

  • dan@upvote.au
    3·
    11 个月前

    Opera today is essentially totally different to the innovative browser from the 2000s. I miss the old Opera.

    Vivaldi is trying to become its replacement, but I don’t really want to contribute to the KHTML/Blink/Webkit monoculture.

  • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
    2·
    11 个月前

    This is a great read. Never knew Opera transitioned to an enshittified abomination of crypto spyware and bloatware.

    • dan@upvote.au
      3·
      11 个月前

      It used to be great… A truly innovative browser that had so many features that even browsers today don’t have.

      I switched away from it when they switched to the Blink engine, probably around 2012 or so? It’s been all downhill since then.

      • renard_roux@beehaw.org
        3·
        11 个月前

        Same, used Opera religiously back in the day, so much more functional than the rest. Switched to Chrome (yes yes, I know) when it started going downhill.

        Chrome still doesn’t have the ability to set a shortcut for “switch to previous tab”, have to use a plugin for that 🙄

      • petrescatraian@libranet.de
        1·
        11 个月前

        @dan They did try to bring back some stuff in the later years, like an integrated RSS feed reader. But Firefox is just way better than anything else overall. Including the fact that it comes from an organization that puts privacy further up in the list of priorities.

        @BaroqueInMind

      • w00@feddit.de
        1·
        11 个月前

        Try Vivaldi, it’s made by former opera Devs from before opera became Chinese

        • dan@upvote.au
          2·
          11 个月前

          It’s good but I don’t want to contribute to the HTML/Webkit/Blink monoculture. We need multiple browser engines in the world. That’s one of the reasons I use Firefox.

  • Celediel@slrpnk.net
    2·
    11 个月前

    I quit using Opera when it became just another Chromium fork, and never looked back. It seems like that was an excellent decision, lol.

    • petrescatraian@libranet.de
      1·
      11 个月前

      @BarrierWithAshes Just use Firefox. There’s plenty of stuff that can be achieved just through add-ons and switching various settings in about:config. Only thing that’s missing is an integrated free VPN, but I guess there are better alternatives anyway if you want more privacy online.

      @corbin

      • BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social
        2·
        11 个月前

        I use LibreWolf and various Chromium clones. It’s good enough for me for now. I refuse to support Mozilla in any way past that.

    • kfet@lemmy.ca
      0·
      11 个月前

      I have different experience with Vivaldi, been using it for years, and it’s amazing.

      • DaleGribble88@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        11 个月前

        Vivaldi has been my browser of choice for years as well. Fantastic product in my experience. I’ve sadly forced myself to start using firefox and librewolf in an attempt support alternatives to chromium based browsers. Firefox and co. are fine, but I’m still reaching for features and options from vivaldi that just don’t exist in firefox without a maze of incompatible and poorly maintained plugins.

        • Aelis@beehaw.org
          0·
          11 个月前

          No need to support firefox, they get 1/2 a billion dollars each year from Google :D

          We’re at a point where most of the browsers are just rotten sadly, now it’s just a question of what is less worse than the others. With the coming of manifest v3 I don’t know if Vivaldi will still be worth it to me, I hope it will because even if I’d really like to use librewolf or another good fork of firefox…it’s just so lackluster compared to what Vivaldi offers, especially since I use a lot of its features.

          • Scary le Poo@beehaw.org
            3·
            11 个月前

            Stop with this bullshit. They aren’t influenced by Google in any ways that actually matter. Google is effectively paying to make sure that there is a competitor.