I wonder which Opera Execs received the goodies from google for them to fold their companies uniqueness/any reason to exist.

Sites not working and a mess of confusing features and slow growth is a reason to exist? Remember, after they dumped Presto they've started growing users again.

once it became a chrome re-skin

A skin is just a bunch of visual elements. Opera actually coded a new interface. Calling it a re-skin is just silly.

When exactly was it IE or nothing, pray tell? Was that before or after Netscape devolved into Mozilla? Was this on some magical timeline where Opera 2.0 was never released?

I think he's referring to sites blocking other browsers or not working. Mozilla and Opera weren't even relevant at all early on (no users = no compatibility). For a while after Netscape died there was basically just IE if you wantes to be able to actually browse the web.

they had the smallest, faster, most portable, most customisable browser which was *sold* as part of the Nintendo Wii launch (you call it The Internet Channel

And guess what, Nintendo dumped Opera when choosing a browser for the Wii U. Being small, fast and the most portable doesn't matter anymore. The hardware is fast enough to run just about anything anyway.

I'm suggesting that a company that makes MONEY by having users use it, should strive to keep those users. Rather than become yet-another-Chrome that even less people use.

Yeah, except Opera's reports to its owners indicate that the new Opera is growing faster than the old one ever did, and people who try it out are less likely to stop using it again.

They got bought out, they shipped off the developers that knew how to program, they ended up with a Windows-only Chrome frontend dependent on someone else to do the hard work of making them money.

Opera was never acquired. It's still an independent commpany.

They didn't ship off any developers, as most of the people who used to do development are still working for Opera.

Opera is not Windows-only. It was also released for Mac. and now Linux. And of course iPhone, Android, etc.

Someone else is not doing the hard work. Opera is one of the biggest contributors to the Chromium project.

But let's ignore the facts shall we...

And in the process lost a LOT of users, who are really their only revenue stream now that they DON'T pump out versions for other platforms like the Wii any more...

They didn't lose a lot of users. And besides, the new Opera is growing faster than the Presto-based Opera ever did anyway.

And of course, Opera's revenue has never been higher than it is now.

there hasn't been an update since the 15 series that actually did anything, and most of those updates broke stuff

What stuff was broken with updates after 15?

They are trying to play catch-up from an unnecessary code-base change to what they used to have.

If they hadn't changed, they would have lagged more and more behind. At least now they get the latest web tech.

The coding team has changed. The company has changed.

The coding team hasn't changed more than a team normally changes in a couple of years according to the teams themselves. The company has changed? All companies change.

There is no interest in preserving users any more.

Really? Because switching to Blink seems to be preserving users in a better way than the old version. Opera's report to its owners indicates that people who start using the new versions are less likely to move on to something else than versions before 15.

Bug reports get answered with "We haven't got around to that yet" or "We never intend to put that functionality back in.

You get answers to bug reports? That's new. When did they start doing that? Sounds like a massive improvement. On the other hand, bugs seem to be fixed at a much faster rate now than they used to.

They removed every major feature that did something useful, so it's now a very, very poor Chrome clone.

They didn't actually remove any features. They just started from scratch. It's far from being a Chrome clone. Just becase it's a simple browser doesn't make it a Chrome clone.

We hoped the company would see sense and start re-using that codebase after they realised their catastrophic mistake. It never happened.

A "catastrophic mistake" which made the desktop version grow faster in number of users than any versions before it? Right.

The only patches they ever put out to the "real" Opera codebase broke it along the way, presumably because they just don't understand the code at all.

Why would they suddenly stop understanding the code they wrote? Most of the same people who worked on Opera 12 are still working for Opera.

How did they break it when patching it? Got any examples? Or are you just making up things.

Funny thing is, simple changes in the old Opera often broke things. You know, when all the developers you mistakenly thought had left were still working actively on Presto.

Opera couldn't make any money. They're trying to survive.

Opera has been profitable for a long time. They've had tons of cash in the bank most of the time as well.

Your links are all to denialist web sites. Those are not "the scientists" at all. The actual scientists are the ones publishing actual science in actual scientific journals. And that research shows man-made warming.

No idea what you mean by "their own experiments have lower confidence." Seems like you're parroting something one of your non-scientists said.

Yup, this was a glorious coup by company higher-ups.

Wait, what? Are you really saying that the people in charge of the company made decisions about the company?

Shock! Horror!

Even Wium Lie, the father of CSS and long-time Opera manager, backs the switch. But I guess he's part of the conspiracy too.

Grats, Opera management. You managed to kick out a good founder, kick out a good engine, and kick out any certainty that you won't be sold out to Facebook (Facebook, ffs!).

Facebook? Why? They said they weren't planning on getting aqcuired. Instead they've been making their own acquisitions.

You even made me wonder, between Tolfsen's account and the second engine change (from WebKit to Blink), if Google has simply stuffed your ranks with their management just to Elop the place.

Actually, there was no second engine change in reality. Opera used Chromium in the first place, so when the engine was forked it was automatically forked in Opera as well. There goes your crazy conspiracy theory.

But when we see them dumping their rendering engine developers instead of setting them out to do this

They didn't. Hardly any engine developers were let go. Of the 90 people who left or were fired in total (out of about a thousand employees), less than half were engineers. Engineers include testers and developers, so in reality maybe 20 or so developers out of several hundred actually left.

In fact, I read a while ago that Opera was one of the main contributors to Blink. How were they going to do that if they fired all engine developers? Obviously, they did not fire all of them. They fired maybe a fraction of them, if any.

we know that they have cash-flow issues, and apparently they're going to follow the death-march pattern that so many managers seem to choose when faced with such problems.

Whatever gave you that idea? Opera has been constantly been making record profits since a while before they dumped Presto. They are making money, and are growing fast.

Where are you getting your info from anyway? The Onion?

Since they changed to using webkit, they are, in my opinion, basically irrelevant now.

Since most people don't care about the engine, this is clearly not true. If more sites work they are more likely to get more users, and that makes them more relevant than before.

Say what you will about Presto not working on site x, y, or z, more diversity is good, and it helps keep real standard in check.

Yeah, but who is going to pay for it? They spent insane amounts of money trying to catch up with other engines.

I sent them an email or two with suggestions and bug reports and some of that stuff did actually find its way into the product. Seemed like excellent customer service to me, back then. So all I have going for myself is experience.

The problem is that you think that just because you said something to them, that was the reason why it was added in the first place. Also, they've been fixing bugs based on bug reports for ages, and are still doing so.

As for being paid for with google searches: that's adware. That's not a product. You know perfectly well how good adware generally is. Opera is just another example of how bad it is for everyone involved.

Yes, it is a product. All free browsers rely on revenue sharing from searches, including Firefox.

And the bottom line is that you did not have more input when you were paying. They're far more open and responsive to user needs now than they were when they charged for it. Also, had it not been free, Opera would have been dead by now.

The best I can tell, they get zero revenue from it. The money comes from the codebase they license to various embedded vendors, like Nintendo, for example.

Nope. Opera gets plenty of revenue from the desktop version. Every time you do a Google search, Opera gets money. Multiply that by tens of millions, and you get a nice amount of cash. How about reading up on Opera's finances instead of speculating?

I really can't fathom what's the use of desktop Opera other than browsing porn or similar image-heavy galleries

It's because it has tons of useful features that other browsers just can't match.

I would only use it as a main browser if there was a paid version available, where the users had some input into the direction the development is taking.

What makes you think paying for it gives you more input into the direction of the development? While Opera was payware you hardly got to give any input at all, and most releases were secret until the final version was out. After they stopped charging they started releasing early public test versions and set up a blog to gather feedback on those.

So where you got the idea that you had more input when paying, I have no idea. It's clearly not true.