why did opera browser change like this?

A Former User

Originally posted by cyxovi:

Originally posted by cyxovi:

The number you posted above may be correct. There are several reliable sources show the same number that means it's believable:

Sorry everybody, my bad.

The number you (Raven) posted above may be correct. There are several independent sources show the same number that means it's reliable.

No difference, you're still unable to prove their methodology is effective to reflect reality.

blackbird71

blackbird71

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

... Why do you readily ignore Opera went from 60 million users (1Q 2012) to 52 million (2Q 2013) when only Opera 11.x and 12.x were released? And again you ignore there's no notification about the new versions, which means users may still be leaving Opera altogether (because of 11.x/12.x) without even knowing Opera 15+ is available. ...

So are you suggesting that users were/are leaving Opera 11.x/12.x simply out of boredom? Or, if it's because old Opera no longer works well for their favorite sites, rather than check into why or how to fix it (at either Opera's sites or out on the web, in which case they'd find out Opera 15+ exists), they instead seek out another browser brand, install it, migrate their personal data to it, and switch over to using it as primary? To me, that all seems far more unlikely than the mere possibility that they just might not like what they currently experience with any of Opera's offerings, 12x or 15+, as they now stand... Old Opera because of site-compatibility issues, and New Opera because of its spartan feature set and odd "feel" compared with Old Opera and other browsers.

tradeofjane

tradeofjane

Originally posted by leushino:

Perhaps von Tetzchner was simply out of step with the times. It may be that his vision is partly what kept Opera as a browser suite that was not even on the radar of most users worldwide and perennially at 3% or lower. Who can really say? But he's gone and while he's entitled to his opinions, that's all they are. Furthermore, I don't agree that "Opera would have had more users if the company had continued to invest in its products" (i.e. Presto). The facts do not support that view. In fact, they suggest just the opposite.

If Opera had continued to invest in its products they'd have a better browser. Market share doesn't = better. Just look at Internet Explorer. And during Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner's time as CEO, Opera became the only commercial web browser available for the Nintendo DS, DSi and Wii gaming systems and was winning numerous awards.

Originally posted by leushino:

Yes, I'm aware of all of this. My previous statement was made with tongue in cheek regarding another's claim that Opera's 18 years of 3% was the result of a lack of marketing. Opera never had any "fame" as you put it. If that were so, word of mouth on the internet would have brought in droves of users over those 18 years. But it never happened because Opera's feature set, as you put it, was seen as too geeky, too convoluted, too bloated out of the box to be worthwhile. And saddled as it was with an email client did not help matters either.

IE and Safari are the “default” browsers on their respective operating systems. Google’s brand positioning is simplicity and speed. Firefox is that it's the most customizable browser and has strong support from the open-source community. Opera is alone. If they started offering Opera as the perfect Facebook browser for example they would quickly move up.

j7nj7n

j7nj7n

The new Opium is as close as it gets to a "Facebook browser" because it relies on all functionality being implemented on the page itself rather than around the browser.

They could offer it as a "secure" broser that gives its operator control over what is normally not controllable, such as advertisements that get loaded. Of course ad blocker is not anything unique anymore, and perhaps they could add more options for extracting useful content out of the web, like selective flash downloading. However, that could risk them being banned from some webites though and thus decrease the usage share.

blackbird71

blackbird71

Originally posted by j7nj7n:

... perhaps they could add more options for extracting useful content out of the web, like selective flash downloading. However, that could risk them being banned from some websites though and thus decrease the usage share.

Which, in extremis, raises a generic question about what might actually shape any browser's design going forward. If sites en-masse sniff a browser (via UA, JavaScript, etc) to determine whether it's on their internal list of "unfavorites" because of the privacy or ad-blocking features a browser model is designed to contain and if they block users with such a listed browser, then the Internet as we know it will have changed considerably for the worse. The site providers would then be calling all the shots about content, who views what, and how. Browsers, to be successful at the most popular sites, would have to be designed for the lowest common denominator of what the site operators demand... which easily could eventually mean full ad display, prohibition of browser privacy settings, acceptance of tracking cookies, and so on - else the site wouldn't work with browsers that allow a user to guard against such things. All in all, a rather chilling prospect...

paulgbond

paulgbond

I've read through most of this thread, and may other - similar - threads here. What this all comes down to - to me at least - is Opera -as we KNEW it - is essentially dead. Build 12.16 is the last GOOD browser Opera put out. Anything - A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G put out after is merely a "one off" of Chrome.

All this talk of marketing, competition, etc. is moot. Opera has decided to follow the leader and try to gain market share by being the same but with a different name and color scheme. Why use the Google engine for the browser? It's cheaper than continuing to support your OWN engine/kernel. Opera came about as an answer to what it has now become. It WAS the best, most customizable, USEFUL browser out. I liken this all to the old WinDOS v. OS/2 war some years ago. OS/2 was a MUCH better OS. Better in EVERY way - except that the masses want simplicity. They don't want REAL power or control. OS/2 forced M$ to change many things to keep up, but in the end killed itself by being so robust. Opera has done the same thing. It forced tabbed browsing to other browsers,

The entire reason Opera came about was to give a DIFFERENT experience to the user. Taking on the Chrome engine, by default, killed that IMHO. Sure, we've been told many of the things we loved about the original Opera may come back, but when? It's been how many months now since the "new and improved" Opera has been out? Where is the customization? Where is session browsing? For all I care now, I might as WELL use Safari on my Macs. Who needs Opera in its' current form? It doesn't give me ANY advantage over what Apple already sends with the computer. I still use Opera 12.16 because I LIKE it better. I do not use the new version because I don't LIKE Chrome. If I did, I would use IT to begin with.

Someone - someone with real knowledge and understanding - tell me WHY I should choose Opera over Chrome, or even Firefox as an "alternate" browser. Where is the advantage? WHAT is the advantage to Opera now?

A Former User

Originally posted by blackbird71:

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

... Why do you readily ignore Opera went from 60 million users (1Q 2012) to 52 million (2Q 2013) when only Opera 11.x and 12.x were released? And again you ignore there's no notification about the new versions, which means users may still be leaving Opera altogether (because of 11.x/12.x) without even knowing Opera 15+ is available. ...

So are you suggesting that users were/are leaving Opera 11.x/12.x simply out of boredom? Or, if it's because old Opera no longer works well for their favorite sites, rather than check into why or how to fix it (at either Opera's sites or out on the web, in which case they'd find out Opera 15+ exists), they instead seek out another browser brand, install it, migrate their personal data to it, and switch over to using it as primary?

For me it's likely, after all the browser informs the user it's using the latest version and it's kind of common sense how compatibility problems cursed Opera growth in the past. Regular users mustn't even have much data to migrate.

A Former User

Originally posted by Tradeofjane:

If Opera had continued to invest in its products they'd have a better browser. Market share doesn't = better. Just look at Internet Explorer. And during Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner's time as CEO, Opera became the only commercial web browser available for the Nintendo DS, DSi and Wii gaming systems and was winning numerous awards.

Opera 17 won an "award" recently, you'll find about this I'm sure. Wii, DS and DSi browsers have negligible market share and I don't think Opera makes any profit of it apart from the money Nintendo themselves paid for the deal back then, Nintendo wasn't even interested in updating the browser past 9.x.

Nevertheless, that's not even the point. Have you heard the developers when they said the Opera-Presto code was too complex to maintain and improve? There's no need to keep the devs unhappy because of such unused features. They're actually more competitive now with Chromium (things like better compatibility, standards support, multi-process and hardware acceleration are finally here!! - the devs were struggling to deliver these things with Presto, it's very obvious with the never ready hardware acceleration and even OOPP was disabled after causing issues in 12).

tradeofjane

tradeofjane

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

Nevertheless, that's not even the point. Have you heard the developers when they said the Opera-Presto code was too complex to maintain and improve? There's no need to keep the devs unhappy because of such unused features. They're actually more competitive now with Chromium (things like better compatibility, standards support, multi-process and hardware acceleration are finally here!! - the devs were struggling to deliver these things with Presto, it's very obvious with the never ready hardware acceleration and even OOPP was disabled after causing issues in 12).

If Opera wanted to keep the devs happy they wouldn't have let some of them go. And they're actually more competitive now with Chromium? O_o Seriously? They are Chromium. Hell they might as well call it ChromOpera. Opera use to be innovative and unique. ChromOpera is just an imitation of Chrome. So instead of being competitive they decided to copy every thing from Chrome's branding to their browser. Why exactly? If someone wanted to use Chrome they would use Chrome. Just look at the low market share of the browsers that have copied off of Firefox.

j7nj7n

j7nj7n

Originally posted by blackbird71:

If sites en-masse sniff a browser (via UA, JavaScript, etc) to determine whether it's on their internal list of "unfavorites" because of the privacy or ad-blocking features a browser model is designed to contain and if they block users with such a listed browser, then the Internet as we know it will have changed considerably for the worse.

Even if some websites did ban some browsers, as long as there are many sites on the web and many users, the websites thelselves would also have to compete for a usage share, and shouldn't able to dictate their rules. We can observe clients being banned on Bittorrent sites already for the same reasons that some software have undesirable functions (leeching, just like leeching useful webpages without watching ads). But if site admins have too many or too harsh restrictions, users can leave for another community. If, on the other hand, Facebook and a handful of other networks is the whole internet, leaving is no longer an option.

My content filtering in Opera works well because I have customized it, as can anybody else, and site authors have little motivation to target my specific patterns. I have observed that some sites containing "omniture" scripts have become broken, as did Adf.Ly, but omniture was successfully filtered for me during that time. Webmasters can relatively easily counter AdBlock Plus, which everyone uses, but not as easily if there are dozens of blocking methods out there.

raven

raven

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

Originally posted by Raven:

If they did it to increase market share, they're clearly failing:

See browser statistics by version: Opera 12.1x is holding its ground with only about 1/5th of users having switched to the Chromium-based versions.

The same is corroborated by Sitepoint's Craig Buckler's analysis of StatCounter numbers:

The Blink editions of Opera (version 15+) account for 0.2% of the market — or 18% of the browser’s user-base. Opera users normally upgrade quickly so it seems not everyone is convinced by the new version.

Sorry, but how can you be so dumb?
How do you want to compare the adoption of a browser version delivered via auto-update and one which there's no notice it's available?

Check this for real numbers:
http://www.zdnet.com/time-to-move-on-final-patch-for-opera-12-due-by-mid-2014-7000023427/

About half of the Opera desktop users are on 15+ by now.
(Note: there's no way to know how many are upgrading from a prior version and how many are new users.)

First, please stop the insults! I would have expected better from someone like you, Rafael.

Second, are you really preferring some unsubstantiated numbers thrown around by marketing to real-world statistics?

Third, the numbers may be flawed, but seem consistent. Opera <=12.x has always been a bit underreported, but the numbers on these statistics (pre O15) look about right. Then, they really differentiate between 12.x and 15+ which contradicts the typical "they don't care about details" argument.

Opera 15+ is the one version offered on the Opera homepage when you want to download the desktop browser. This means, every new user (at which the whole move-to-blink was targeted) will be offered the new version only. Still, it doesn't seem to get any traction.
Rather, the overall number of Opera users stays about the same with only some of them switching to the new version.

mrfx

mrfx

Originally posted by paulgbond:

Someone - someone with real knowledge and understanding - tell me WHY I should choose Opera over Chrome, or even Firefox as an "alternate" browser. Where is the advantage? WHAT is the advantage to Opera now?

Hi! I switched a week ago to Opera from Chrome because of (very annoying) "waiting for cache freeze" issue of the latter (problem is known for years and still no reliable fix). I have not this problem with Opera so far. I even didn't know that recent versions of Opera has been using Chromium SDK. So long as browser is stable, fast and reasonable W3C–Compliant I don't care about rendering engine brand, however I understand that current version of Opera is immature (in contrast to last Presto builds) and there's still is a lot of work to be done.

Deleted User

Deleted User

Originally posted by Tradeofjane:

IE and Safari are the “default” browsers on their respective operating systems. Google’s brand positioning is simplicity and speed. Firefox is that it's the most customizable browser and has strong support from the open-source community. Opera is alone.

Google also has a reputation for distributing Chrome by sneaking into people's computers along with Java and Flash updates.

Opera is not alone any more. Here's a report implying that Opera has adopted Google's tactics http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=14997322 It would be nice to get it confirmed broader of course, to be properly sure.

tradeofjane

tradeofjane

Originally posted by ersi:

Google also has a reputation for distributing Chrome by sneaking into people's computers along with Java and Flash updates.

Opera is not alone any more. Here's a report implying that Opera has adopted Google's tactics http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=14997322 It would be nice to get it confirmed broader of course, to be properly sure.

Google is an advertising company. Their increase in market share is no surprise. They were able to force users to use Chrome the same way they forced Youtube users to use Google+. Google's success at increasing their market share in the browser market with Chrome comes from marketing, not from having a technically superior browser. I'm sure some people have gone from Internet Explorer to Chrome, but how many have gone from Opera to Chrome? I've used Opera for 10+ years and I've tried Chrome. Google has done a good job of branding their browser as fast. And while Google may claim their browser to be fast so is a mentally challenged kid with a hyperactivity disorder, at least until he hits the wall. Chrome crashes more times than a NASCAR rookie.

bisonfrieze

bisonfrieze

I temporarily had to install Opera 18 and it looks like a disaster. Everything I've grown to love about Opera is missing. It seems to represent the belief that fewer options are better as if we're all going to be staring at a 3 inch screen with a single button for the rest of our lives. We are smart and we can handle choices, customizability and flexibility. You will have to pry Opera 12.16 from my cold, dead fingers.

bisonfrieze

bisonfrieze

I temporarily had to install Opera 18 and it looks like a disaster. Everything I've grown to love about Opera is missing. It seems to represent the belief that fewer options are better as if we're all going to be staring at a 3 inch screen with a single button for the rest of our lives. We are smart and we can handle choices, customizability and flexibility. You will have to pry Opera 12.16 from my cold, dead fingers.

Deleted User

Deleted User

There is no reason for this thread. The question has been asked multiple times for months now and the answers have been provided. Use the search feature before posting useless threads. This thread needs to be closed.

missingno

missingno

There is no reason for Opera 15/16/17/18. This fact has been stated multiple times for months now and the reasons have been provided. Use another browser before downloading useless Opium. This thread can be closed now.

SCNR