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Is Facebook Going To Buy Opera?
New submitter x0d writes with this excerpt from the L.A. Times: "The Facebook spending spree may be continuing as a new report says the social networking giant might be looking to buy Norwegian company Opera Software. Now fully under the microscope of Wall Street as well as Main Street investors, Facebook is trying to solve its mobile monetizing problems and has been gobbling up various companies in recent months to increase its presence in the world of smartphones."
If they do, wont Opera be forgotten like Rockmelt is?
The opera mobile browser works by offloading a lot of work to a server run by opera. This would give facebook access to everything which goes through every mobile opera browser.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I'm sure they could have picked up Internet Explorer for a steal. Imagine the positive effect on the stock price!
Task Mangler
Facebook to buy Western Digital. Because they're going to need all those drives to store EVERY. FUCKING. KEYSTROKE.
Opera owns Fastmail. Do you want Facebook to own your email?
Opera is the best browser out there. I don't trust Chrome not to report data about me to Google, and if Facebook buys Opera I wouldn't trust it not to report my browsing data to Facebook. I will have to move back to the mess that is Firefox
Hmmm .... Opera optionally bundles a web server (Opera Unite) with its browser. With music, photo and note sharing, I always thought that was Opera's attempt to be a P2P version of Facebook.
Who knows, Facebook may end up becoming more P2P-ish, a la Skype -- a centralised set of 'supernodes' that track who's talking/streaming photos/video/comments to whom (and keeps a copy), but without the infrastructure and delays their current 'hub and spoke' model requires.
That's why you don't give these fuckers money. They're going to ruin it for everyone, not just for the idiots who sign up for their walled garden.
I can't stand Facebook and refuse to have an account with the service, despite the continuing trend of many companies requiring an account for one thing or another, but if they were to buy Opera then that would mean they also acquire FastMail; my current email service. Over my dead body would I entrust my emails to Zuckerburg and his company.
On one hand I think the FB app could use a LOT of advice from Opera's mobile team. I have an overclocked GalaxyS2 running at 1.5ghz...modded to the gills. Nothing on this phone is slow...except Facebook. Every update makes the experience more and more miserable. Opera's mobile/mini browsers are among the fastest and smoothest apps I have ever used. By far. Bar none. On any mobile platform....or any platform ever, for that matter. On the other hand I've been using Opera for over 12 years now. It is my go-to browser and it is the first thing I install on a computer...regardless of OS. It has always been ahead of it's time...often by a very long time (we've been returning to the same multi-tabbed browsing session for how much longer than everyone else?). Anyone I recommend the browser to becomes a lifelong fan. Geeks and non-geeks alike. It's tiny, lightning quick, hyper-compliant and more configurable than anything else.
I know that having Facebook sized development money can be nothing but a great thing for the progress of the browser, but, I'm more concerned with the direction of this development. Also some very obvious concerns with the use of turbo-mode to help FB aggregate more of the world's information...
...I'm going to vote 'I really hope not' on this one.
I haven't used Opera in a good long while*, and I've never heard of the mentioned source site Pocket-lint, but after the damning parting words of von Tetzchner, I wouldn't put it past Opera to allow let Facebook take them.
Nice knowin' ya, Oppy.
*Actually I did a few times a month or two ago for some SVG testing; otherwise I've barely touched it, and I'll be uninstalling it now just in case the probable turns out true.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
There are better targets than a once-great browser. Opera is no longer, no matter what their home page says, the fastest browser in the business.
Twitter, for example. A Facebook takeover of the company will ensure render comatose any hopes G+ has of winning any marketshare.
Another is Yahoo. Too big? I'm pretty sure Yahoo's stockholders would agree to a stock swap that would leave hot-young CEO Zuckerberg in control. Facebook can use some of whatever remains of Yahoo's search technology.
This has been both in the news and debunked YESTERDAY.
Hello, DearFuckingSpammer. Maybe someone should clean your PC with a baseball bat so you stop posting here?
Damn. I've been using Opera for several years now. If it comes under the thumb of Facebook, I'll jump ship. I don't want those fuckers backdooring themselves into everything I do online.
Likewise. Opera has been my main browser for more than a decade, although my wife generally uses Firefox. Luckily, I've also been using Chromium, and consider it an acceptable replacement: not quite as good with privacy settings, but slightly more compatible with weird web sites. If Opera becomes part of Facebook, I'll drop it on principle (all Facebook IPs are already blocked by my router to inhibit unwanted tracking).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
My, the spammers have mod points as well.
Best to just reset the password on those accounts.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Companies that tend to get always bigger and bigger end up being unstable, don't they ?
As a Cyberneticist I can tell you that this is another layer of control. We built the intangible machinations of Corporations and Government to follow an innocuous looking program that would seem to rocket them to success. It's unfortunate at the moment that some see through the matrix of logic and are disheartened, proclaiming, "We're being ruled by out of control legal machines!" Yes, that's how it's supposed to work. No one can't stop them, because they can't stop themselves... You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
However distressing the situation may be in the moment, take comfort in knowing that there is another overarching system at work, inherent to the core logic of the Idea Machine Nation. The structures of their fractal information flow are each designed to seem very different on the outside, yet even as they compete with each other all are ultimately carrying out the inherent meta-logic loop: Like their organic progenitors, these cybernetic entities have an inborn entropic feedback loop, and have been destined to die since birth.
Though its both joyous and painful at times, this is the system that will boostrap us into a race of rational beings. With each systematic growth and collapse we fall a little less. With each rebirth our species climbs a little higher, and leaves a little more false information and bad ideas behind. All things are cyclic. Failure is a part of the plan, the trick is recognising the point at which the inevitable profit obliteration begins.
If Instagram is worth $1B to Facebook, I figure Opera must be worth at least $10B.
Don't worry ..., you can always just switch to Chrome!
In the nineties I went for freedom (... whatever) and now I am trapped between all my big brothers.