FastMail staff purchase the business from Opera

http://blog.fastmail.fm/2013/09/25/exciting-news-fastmail-staff-purchase-the-business-from-opera/

by robmueller • 13 years ago

238 118 13 years ago

blog.fastmail.fm

unknownian• 13 years ago

Does that mean myopera mail is being shuttered? I hope not. It was like a free version of fastmail.

nly3• 13 years ago

This is more interesting for what it means for Opera than for what it means to Fastmail. First they abandon their browser engine, now a top-notch webmail offering. What do Opera even offer these days that you can't get elsewhere? What 'long term vision' is Rob speaking of?

benologist4• 13 years ago

Unless Opera are building themselves their own little Firefox OS kind of thing they're pretty much fucked moving forward. On the desktop their move to webkit successfully destroyed every reason to use Opera and doesn't measure up against rivals, and they've been netscaped out of mobile.

jarcoal• 13 years ago

I don't think many people used Opera because of it's rendering engine; they used it because of the GUI and high-level features.

Moving to webkit just let them focus on what actually made them unique to their customers.

tagawa2• 13 years ago

An increasing proportion of Opera's (growing) revenue comes from advertising (they bought a few agencies recently) and their share price continues to climb. I don't think they have many problems moving forward, it's just less visible than their traditional consumer-facing domain.

Still a shame they dropped Presto, though.

manojlds• 13 years ago

The recently released Coast for iPad is interesting - coastbyopera.com/

I am thinking Opera want to be acquired?

thaumaturgy• 13 years ago

I hope not. I've just switched (long-term, I hope) to Opera out of complete disgust with Google and a lingering disgust with Firefox. It's nice to have choices.

vijucat2• 13 years ago

and they've been netscaped out of mobile.

Not sure what you mean. Just FYI : at least on Android phones, among FF, Chrome, Opera (and the default browser), Opera's text flow is the best by far. You can zoom in and read any article on any site, and it does just the right thing. There is honestly an element of fear when you use Firefox for the same thing: it's absolutely unpredictable what it will do when you zoom in. I can sympathize with the developers since the re-layout of a page, figuring out whether the user wants to zoom in on the text or the image, etc; may be quite difficult. Opera Mobile has seemingly perfected this over years and years.

sudomal• 13 years ago

Developing an in-house browser engine is rather expensive. It's a moving target with constant pressure to better rivals. There's a need to patch an infinite number of websites, which don't care that you exist.

I can understand why they switched and focused on value added features.

a3n• 13 years ago

What 'long term vision' is Rob speaking of?

To spend more time with their family?

nej• 13 years ago

I can't speak for Opera but if you take a look at their latest browser in iOS (only available for the iPad) it will give you some hope in the direction Opera is going. The browser, "Coast" as they call it is a pretty nifty, well crafted and thought out browser.

My guess is they're trying going for a niche product and are focusing on what's important to them rather than try to get their feet wet in every market.

mverwijs• 13 years ago

I remember reading that one of the big money makers is Opera Mini. All the content viewed by that browser comes through proxies run by Opera. This means a HUGE amount of data that Opera can monetize on.

antocv• 13 years ago

Monetize that data like selling it to clients or selling their customers data about their data to them? Will opera run some analysis and sell that?

frenger5• 13 years ago

Please please make this an excuse for a move away from hosting in the USA. A claim to respect privacy necessitates that.

chrischen3• 13 years ago

The stance you should take on privacy in the cloud is that the USA just did a bad job hiding the fact that you had none.

frenger5• 13 years ago

Sick of this nihilist attitude.

the USA just did a bad job hiding the fact that you had none.

Er, no - the USA are the main ones wholesale intercepting everyone's shit - I'm not a US citizen and I don't like it in principle. I did have a pretty good expectation of privacy until they started doing that, because no-one else has the resources to do a similar whole-take surveillance effort.

Anyway, I signed up for Fastmail because I thought it was foreign to the USA (though later found out the servers are hosted in NYC - doh).

But seriously, I'd love to see an end to the "oh well" attitude. The stance I do take is "you're spying on and profiling me? Fuck you I'm leaving". And that helps me sleep at night, for better or worse.

lakwn• 13 years ago

I agree wholeheartedly. I'm a paid customer, I'm loving the service (support too), and this is the only thing keeping me from telling people how great FastMail is.

e12e• 13 years ago

Where would you prefer it be hosted?

I suppose an argument might be made in favour of Germany -- but I'd be surprised if they don't have a similar infrastructure in place for wire-tapping as we know know is in place in the US. UK and France is out. Russia is an open spyocracy of sorts. Iceland?

da_n7• 13 years ago

I'm currently looking into setting up a VPS in Iceland or Germany and running my own mail server from it, moving away from Fastmail. It saddens me as I both dislike managing my own mail server and really like Fastmail, but having my email routed through the US is no longer feasible.

frenger5• 13 years ago

Brazil? haha. Iceland or Germany for sure. Finland, Eastern Europe, maybe?

Simply out of USA/UK jurisdiction would be good, as they're now demonstrably the worst in the West (at least it would certainly seem so based on recent news trends). So, anywhere else.

sygma• 13 years ago

They are already hosting in Iceland (but also, New York) [0]. I guess the next step would be to allow the customer to choose.

[0] https://twitter.com/FastMailFM/status/382100278415081473

D9u2• 13 years ago

Since the .fm tld is for the Federated States of Micronesia, I was sort of hoping for hosting on some tropical island in the South Pacific, but even then the Fastmail operators would more than likely acquiesce to any US spying "requests."

Unfortunately, there are increasingly few nations which will refuse US et al spying "requests."

sergiosgc2• 13 years ago

Portugal just opened the largest EU datacenter. Connectivity infrastructure is really good in the country (heh, international debt had to go somewhere...). The government couldn't care less about snooping, although they are US-friendly to a fault. However, court approval is required for snooping and courts are slow moving and processes are open: Service providers may inform the customer about the snooping order and may withhold data if the customer challenges the court order.

Plus, it's sunny!

josteink4• 13 years ago

If I remember correctly, fastmail representatives have (here on HN) promised that they were planning a move from US-based datacenters to European datacenters, if not completely, offering it as an option for people who wanted it.

I'd love to get this confirmed, and some news on when I can expect to have my account hosted in Europe.

US datacenters is pretty much a no-no these days.

roel_v• 13 years ago

FWIW, 2 months ago Fastmail support told me they have no plans or intentions of moving away from their US data centers.

throwawayyyz• 13 years ago

I love Fastmail and have been a paid user for many years now, but I hate the new AJAXy interface, in particular the infinite scroll as currently implemented. Slow, annoying, and makes it difficult to reach old emails.

tagawa2• 13 years ago

You can select the classic interface on the login page. I agree, it feels more usable than the fancy version.

cdvonstinkpot• 13 years ago

Yeah, the new interface is missing a few essential things the classic interface has, so I keep the box checked too. Hope it doesn't get phased out- would be mad without the classic interface.

whichdan• 13 years ago

Fastmail has one of the few interfaces that gets infinite scrolling /right/. The outer mailbox div has overflow-y: auto; and the inner div is the combined height of every message in that folder -- my inbox has 11381 messages, and the height is 364192px. When the scrollbar is moved, JS automatically determines which messages to load. Messages themselves are tiny AJAX requests that take less than 100ms each.

This is from the perspective of using Chrome on high end hardware, but I couldn't ask for a better web interface.

That said, they aren't joking about needing a new mobile interface: the current one is usable, but definitely lacks the same polish as the desktop version.

lessnonymous• 13 years ago

That infinite scrolling is AWESOME. I absolutely HATE everyone else's version that makes dragging the scrollbar useless as it jumps around.

r4pha• 13 years ago

I used to love gmail's webclient. When I moved to fastmail, I thought I'd miss that a lot. As it turns out, I started using thunderbird and K9 mail on my phone for reading e-mail and I never check my email from any browser at all. I feel now more comfortable with a dedicated email/calendar client - plus the enigmail extension - and it pushes me towards a good habit of never logging in into untrusted computers. I mean, I can't possibly be sure my own computer/cellphone are safe, let alone the other people's.

jimmcslim• 13 years ago

Have been a paying customer of Fastmail.fm since early 2003. It just works and I hope it continues to for many years to come!

coffeecheque• 13 years ago

I'm a big fan of Fastmail, and I'm tentatively excited about this announcement.

Missing CardDAV/CalDav sync ability is sorely missing, so it's good to see the developers talking about it.

I'd also like to see (and would pay for) options where the data is located in other countries, away from the United States. It's really symbolic, but also practical: I'd like my data closer to where I live.

josteink4• 13 years ago

Seconding this.

Currently I'm fine having that live in owncloud, but should fastmail start supporting it, I may want to sync these data-sets.

Not sure I want to move everything into one place and one place only though. If it was one thing my migration from Google Apps taught me, it was that having too much stuff auto-integrated in one place makes it much harder to have control of your own data.

It severely limits your options to mix and mash best of breed services as you see fit.

da_n7• 13 years ago

How do you find Owncloud, is it reliable enough? I have heard it has a lot of bugs, can be very slow and in rare instances deletes data at random which would be unacceptable to me. I am using Baikal for CardDav and CalDav which has been very reliable so far, and BitTorrent Sync for Dropbox replacement which is less reliable and has some bad bugs (one of which is it being closed source).

D9u2• 13 years ago

I've been a Fastmail user for years, ever since I realized that their web UI was compatible with my Windows Mobile Phone. (pre iPhone era)

Here we are now, and the rest of the net has caught up to mobile access, mostly. Though my initial reasons for using Fastmail have become moot points, I'll continue to use my Fastmail accounts with fond memories and hope for improved resistance to governments' exceeding their mandates.

beagle32• 13 years ago

If anyone at Opera is reading this:

Please open source Carakan and Presto - don't let them rot, and us hackers have what to learn with them (and potentially do with them). GPL is fine, and may let you still monetize it.

(And ... it's not like it's giving you any advantage - you've switched away from both)

telephonetemp• 13 years ago

Opera Mini still uses Presto. It is quite popular still, especially where people can't get 3G or better coverage.

rplnt• 13 years ago

And I don't know anyone (from the few people I know that use Opera) who switched to the new Opera (since it sucks).

beagle32• 13 years ago

Is Carakan being used in anything other than older Desktop Operas?

hotwatermusic• 13 years ago

From this presentation (http://vimeo.com/73934576): Presto don't go open source in the foreseeable future, cause Opera don't want to lose support contracts for the TV browsers. That's makes sense.

andybak• 13 years ago

Would it not be possible to add some terms to the licence to protect that revenue stream in some way?

phowat• 13 years ago

Also Please, Release Opera 16 for Linux already. As a long time Opera user I feel completely abandoned.

breakupapp• 13 years ago

I use Opera just to maintain separate cookies haha.

Osiris2• 13 years ago

I use it at work because it ignores the system policy against downloading exe files. I hate trying to download an installer and having Chrome tell me (after the fact) that the system blocked the file. Opera doesn't care and saves the file just fine.

nikcub• 13 years ago

You can do that with Chrome, Firefox and Safari as well - check out my project tmpbrowser, which is a simple app that creates temporary throwaway browser sessions:

https://github.com/nikcub/tmpbrowser

billpg• 13 years ago

How to configure Firefox with multiple profiles... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5oubQ4kggs

(I made this!)

dingaling• 13 years ago

During the Opera tenure, FastMail moved to new, larger premises in Melbourne and took on quite a few new staff. They did a lot of work on the My Opera Mail web client, which will hopefully be folded back into the main FM product.

They also built-out data centre capacity, including facilities in Iceland.

So all around I think FM benefited greatly from the three years under Opera, though I'm not convinced the reverse is true.

lubos• 13 years ago

the most annoying thing about fastmail is their high cost for storage. their new web-based client is top-notch performance-wise. a lot better than gmail.

antihero2• 13 years ago

I'm looking forward to better mobile support. Currently I can't sync contacts at all because the only Android LDAP contacts app seems not to be purchasable.

josteink4• 13 years ago

I went with contact-management (and calendar-management) via owncloud.

There's two apps in the Play store, one for CardDAV[1] and one for CalDAV[2].

That setup works for me.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.cardd...

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.calda...

antihero2• 13 years ago

I just wish OwnCloud wasn't a slow PHP script. Can FastMail sync with any cardDAV server? Because I might just write on of those or something.

autonomy773• 13 years ago

Not impressed with Fastmail - I tried their free offer, wasn't impressed, and didn't sign up for the paid service. I've since had over 100 (yup) emails telling me of my "OVERDUE PAYMENT" (the caps are theirs), and they ignore correspondence requesting that they stop. Marketing via harrassment - interesting tactic, and incredibly bad form, IMHO.

dombili• 13 years ago

I've since had over 100 (yup) emails telling me of my "OVERDUE PAYMENT" (the caps are theirs),

Oh god, yes. This was annoying as hell. I actually liked their service but at the end of the month I didn't think I was using email enough to justify paying 40 bucks a year, so I decided to keep using the one I got for free when I got a domain. But even if I was going to buy, I wouldn't have just because of this harrassment. Here's a screenshot from my inbox: http://i.imgur.com/meNhlAr.png (there are some more that couldn't fit into the screenshot)

Osmium• 13 years ago

That's absolutely crazy. I'm a paying Fastmail customer, and that really puts me off. I'm "trialing" them for 6 months at the moment with a personal domain before I decide whether I want to permanently switch to them, and so far had been very impressed... but that makes me think twice. I hope they're paying attention to this!

autonomy773• 13 years ago

While it's a relief that I'm not alone in this, it raises a concern that this policy of bludegoning people to sign up via email DOES appear to be a company policy. Plus, they refuse to even acknowledge emails on the subject.

I cannot recommend them less. Shabby treatment of potential customers.

nmjenkins• 13 years ago

(I work for FastMail) Many apologies about this. It was due to an unexpected interaction with our billing system when we added the free trial functionality. We never intended to spam or harass people who decided FastMail wasn't for them. We fixed this about a month ago and overhauled the wording in our notices as well to make them friendlier and easier to understand.

autonomy773• 13 years ago

To nmjenkins, thanks for the reply and apology - please do not take this as a personal shot: I appreciate that issues occur with automated systems - but ignoring emails of complaint sent to addresses advertised on your website suggests that a different issue is in play. Not one of my emails was replied to, and the lasting impression is that - as I do not wish to become a customer - there was no point in responding at all to my complaint. Your reply above is appreciated, however - thank you.

drill_sarge• 13 years ago

I wonder what "strategic changes" they did at Opera? So far they have shut down all their interesting projects (like Opera Unite), their browser has been highly customizable (the UI, not even needing addons) which was abandoned completely in Opera 15. Now they have some half-assed Chrome clone for Desktop, Coast browser which is also nowhere near final, Opera Mobile (not mini) is getting more and more generic like all other mobile browsers...

johnnymonster• 13 years ago

Is FastMail a joke? I get more storage for free at dropbox and sugarsync. What exactly is this service bringing to the table? It feels like a 1998 business model to me...

masnick2• 13 years ago

A lot. http://www.maxmasnick.com/2013/07/19/fastmail/

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6069944

subsection1h• 13 years ago

I don't require GBs of mail storage because my mail is automatically deleted before its 180 days old. Mail that's older than 180 days can be accessed by USG employees without a warrant.

FastMail provides me with mail accounts for $10/year[2] that provide enough storage for 180 days and include required features like custom domain names, domain aliases, email aliases, etc.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/when-will-our-email-be...

[2] https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/family.html

FastMail staff purchase the business from Opera

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