HN user
> Opera has said they will leave all the core stuff to Google and just modify UI and other stuff on top.
False. Opera has said they will contribute to both WebKit and Chromium.
> But it is the case here when Opera is using an enormous codebase by a huge corporation
WebKit is not Google's codebase.
You wrote:
> almost all the work on Opera's new browser will be done by Google. That is why I said "outsourcing development to Google"
According to that logic, using any open-source component is outsourcing development. Doesn't make sense.
A metaphor for what? What's the loaded gun?
Who says employees don't have the full picture? The reasons are even stated in public.
Why would they be terrified of speaking in public -- and if they are, why are several people doing it?
You say that speculating is not particularly useful, and you still speculate that people are terrified of Opera Software, and that the company is lying to its investors about the number of employees?
Actually, look at the Q4 presentation.
Operators are less than 20%. Desktop is the second biggest with nearly 30%, while publishing/advertising is the biggest revenue source with more than 40%.
What are you talking about? Loaded gun?
Are you seriously suggesting that the company is using threats of physical violence to shut former employees up?
Who cares about the founder? He previously said he wouldn't necessarily block an acquisition. And if Opera wanted to be acquired, why are they doing business like usual, and even buying up other companies?
Strange how my karma takes a nosedive because I contradict the "evil Opera is doomed" thing...
You are misunderstanding what "using Chromium means." As I replied to cpeterso:
Using the Chromium framework doesn't mean that you are using the actual final Chromium UI. The CEO himself said they're building a new UI.
Differentiation doesn't take place in the browser engine. It take splace in the UI. Most people have no idea which engine they are using, and they don't care.
Using the Chromium framework doesn't mean that you are using the actual final Chromium UI. The CEO himself said they're building a new UI.
What makes you think they aren't goig to work on Webkit? Out of those 90 people who left or were fired, there were marketing, sales, etc. personell. Only a minority was probably an actual developer.
What makes you think Opera is outsourcing development to Google? Just because something is using a framework doesn't mean they aren't using it to build their own thing on top of it.
Your comment doesn't make sense. It's wild speculation based on an article with false statements.
What makes you think it will just be a skin on top of Chrome?
Execpt all 90 were not developers. They were marketing, sales, etc. Some were engineers, but it seems they were a minority.
Several of them? Such as?
The story is misleading. 90 people have either left of their own free will or were let go for various reasons. Those 90 were not all developers, but included marketing, sales, and other non-engineering staff.
All the comments so far therefore seem to be based on the misconception that they fired their entire Presto development team.
I thought HN was better than this.
So it is not actually out of fear for the current management, then? It's just a general fear of speaking of one's former employer if one was let go?
If so, why even mention Opera specifically then?
Your conspiracy theory kind of falls flat on its face, since former employees have in fact spoken publicly on this.
What you can gather doesn't seem to be very useful either since the quoted number is correct. It's the number of employees reported by Opera to the authorities. But maybe in your conspiracy, Opera manipulates those numbers to lie to the authorities for some unknown, sinister reason?
How is the current management different from the previous management? Didn't the previous management fire anyone? Oh, they did? And they made up some BS reason to justify it?
Do you know what the reason is stated to be this time around, or did you just assume that they are firing random people to strike fear in people's hearts?
My Gawd.
Edit: Regarding people living in fear, here's one of the former employees speaking out:
"The process, from Opera’s side, was done, IMO, very professionally and the severance package we were offered was voluntary as well as substantial."
Have you ever heard about ads?
> Opera was actually strict pro-standard.. sometimes for their own bad.
Not quite. They always made every effort to be as compatible as possible with real world sites.
> Opera having low tolerance for that
Except that is not true. Opera has a high tolerance, probably much higher than any other browser (out of necessity). But that doesn't help much if you're being blocked or sites constantly find new bugs in other browsers they decide to work around and thereby breaking it in any browser that is not one of the top 3.
Why wouldn't they be using Opera anymore? They will be used to Opera, and the brand will be well known to most people.
Why do you think Google is desperate to enter these markets right now?
StatCounter is a terrible source for anything outside of North America and Western Europe.
You should probably update your stats scripts.
> No, they're literally copying Chromium. They're forking the source tree and including it as the rendering engine in their browser. That is a verbatim copy.
This is misleading nonsense. You led people to believe that they would just make a copy of Chrome, but they will obviously not just compile Chromium and give it a new name. They will most likely bring the entire Quick framework and their existing UI to the Chromium framework.
> they're switching to copying Chrome
How so? Like Chrome copied Safari because they're both using Webkit?
> They'll continue to be the browser that nobody cares about (aside from six people who are no doubt here in this thread somewhere), but your site will probably render fine on it.
That's the problem for you Opera bashers. It will now have room to grow and get a much bigger user base on PCs.
Sad story. Too bad you hear it every time there's a new version. Apparently Opera has become more awful every single version, from the very first public version back in the 90s.
Opera borrowed Opera's Speed Dial, they placed the tabs at the top (above the address bar) like Opera did (and people kept bashing it for that), etc.
If Presto can convert pages to the binary markup language, why can't WebKit?
It isn't. It uses a compact Opera-developed engine which interprets the binary markup language coming from the Opera Mini servers.
JavaScript performance was iffy? Opera always had the best JS performance by far, except for that year or two when everyone else started using JIT.