Opera Is Dead - Could It Be Because They Want to Sell It?
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blackbird71 last edited byWith publicly-held companies, anything is always possible, depending on the will and strategy of its board of directors. However, usually a company bent on selling itself doesn't make large investments into its development/product lines before selling... it's unlikely to ever fully recover those revenues from the sales price. Likewise, it generally doesn't make major overhauls of its development/product lines before selling... it creates too much turbulence in evaluating its future income potential and that raises buyer risk, hence lowering price.
On the other hand, if a company makes product line investments and overhauls those lines and demonstrates some stability and success in the marketplace, its chances of commanding a larger sales price rise dramatically. But only after the fact (or if there's a legally-prohibited leak of insider information) will you or I ever know the board's strategy ahead of time. So... one is simply left to speculate, based on their own preconceived thoughts and biases about Opera ASA. As for me, I'd rather go get a cup of coffee...
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A Former User last edited by
Very sad.
it would be a sad end to the once-great Opera browser.
If a company buys Opera aiming to get its hypothetically highly successful product it'll most probably retain the product characteristics and the great great majority of the employees will continue working on it for that company. I don't see what's sad about that, unless the company is another browser maker that won't want to keep all the employees.I think theyre simplifying Opera to make it attractive to potential buyers. I strongly believe this.
What if they're simplifying Opera to make it attractive to potential users?
The old code required more work to maintain, so they simplify the code, and try to sell it off before the userbase completely abandons it.
What company would want to buy it if the userbase was hypothetically abandoning it?
Theory: they simplified the code for themselves.It would also help to explain why they rushed Opera Next out the door as the new version, instead of letting it sit as a beta while they attempted to add functionality to it.
The fact is they were losing users with Opera 12 (e.g. 60 million in 1st quarter of 2012, 52 in 2nd quarter of 2013 - check the financial reports), if they didn't release Opera 15+ soon the damages would be worse. -
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Deleted User last edited by
rafaelluik: "What if they're simplifying Opera to make it attractive to potential users?"
Not possible since Opera has fallen in popularity ever since they remodeled it. And theres been such a backlash of protests against it that you can't browse the forum without eyeing lists of threads trashing it. And why make the browser into Chrome (or, Chrode)? Opera was about being different, not about being the same as everyone else.
leushino: "Any chance of locking this pointless thread?"
Any chance of banning this she-male troll?
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A Former User last edited by
Not possible since Opera has fallen in popularity ever since they remodeled it.
This is not strictly true. They were losing a lot more users when only Opera 12 was available, see example above.Opera was about being different, not about being the same as everyone else.
It's still different. I can spot a fair number of differences.The last part of your comment not only violates these forums rules but is also considered dementia in the "real world".
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Deleted User last edited by
"This is not strictly true. They were losing a lot more users when only Opera 12 was available, see example above."
Thats complete nonsense! Look at the stats!
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A Former User last edited by
Thats complete nonsense! Look at the stats!
No, you look at the officially released number of users.Anyway, the third-party stats will also show you that 15+ surpassed 12.x in popularity.
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blackbird71 last edited by
...this she-male troll?
Why your bitterness, leading to such an unrelated and unjustified ad-hominem attack against somebody who simply disagrees with you? Have you ever considered seeking counseling or anger management?
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nakedfaerie last edited by
I agree with OP. Opera now is total crap.
They went from an awesome browser that i've been using for many years through all the bugs and fixes and keep using it till this day. My bookmarks have been culled many times. I think it was about Opera 3 when I started using it? It was a long time ago. I did give the first version a try but didn't like it then so after a few more years or whatever tried it again and been using it ever since.Now, I've seen what they did to the iPad versions. Killed off Opera and started Coast. Thats total crap. Its nothing, its actually less than nothing. Why go from a working good browser that links with its PC big brother to a thing that you call a browser but it missing everything its little sister has.
Now they also make the same move to the PC versions. WRONG MOVE if you want customers.
I did a backup like I do before things like this and I installed todays version of Opera. HOW CRAP! Its missing so many features I thought would be standard and with all the customizations of Opera the new version has none of them. It doesn't even have bookmarks! Its the lamest version ever. Its not as bad as Coast but its close.There is no way I will ever update Opera again. I am now forced to stay on 12.16 as thats the last of the best browsers.
So ending my rant YES they have sold out. I dont know what is in their small minds but its not customer satisfaction. I guess they see dollar signs and are going that way.
These days everything is about money. Everyone is getting greedy. We need to stop this and start being happy again. The Opera devs NEED to listen to its customers and if it wants to keep them then do what they want. If they want money then they will loose as they will ignore their customers and they will leave leaving a useless not used browser that nobody will buy leaving you with nothing, no money so what was all this stupid change for? NOTHING!
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blackbird71 last edited by
... I guess they see dollar signs and are going that way. These days everything is about money. Everyone is getting greedy. We need to stop this and start being happy again. The Opera devs NEED to listen to its customers and if it wants to keep them then do what they want. If they want money then they will loose as they will ignore their customers and they will leave leaving a useless not used browser that nobody will buy leaving you with nothing, no money so what was all this stupid change for? NOTHING!
It's always been about money, necessarily, in some sense of the word. Development doesn't come for free: developers want to be paid, equipment has to be obtained, electricity has to be purchased, buildings must be leased... and if money isn't considered, development will slam to a halt much sooner rather than later. Moreover, Opera ASA has never been a charity, to my understanding. They're currently a publicly-listed, for-profit company, responsible to investors for covering the business's operating costs so as not to run at a loss. If they simply ignore the 'money' end of things, they'll no longer exist, regardless of the 'features' of their products.
I'm not arguing in this for or against the financial wisdom of the particular path they've chosen to pursue nor the marketability of the products that have so far resulted, but I am observing that to single out and blame the monetary aspect of the business for what has occurred makes about as much sense as calling the company "greedy" whilst vehemently carping and complaining about the features of a browser made available to users for free.
