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."

Comments

Nice one

[MichaelSmith]

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.

Re:Nice one

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you turn on Turbo mode. It's off by default.

But yes it would suck ass if Facebook bought Opera. Opera Mobile is the first thing I install on any smartphone. The desktop version of Opera sucks but the Mobile version is the best browser for any mobile device.

Re:Nice one

[Anonymous Coward]

And that will be the day I will stop using Opera, Desktop and mobile.

Idem. These kinds of occasions underline why it is so important going open source for long term survival.
I love Opera, have being used it since version 7. Its a full featured browser, infintely configurable and really multiplatform.
The day Facebook buys Opera is the last day I use Opera, on smartphones and the desktop. And I will go reluctently to Firefox. But it will be a big regression in terms of configurability and stability.

Re:Nice one

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera Mobile Mini has this option turned on by default, with no option in the GUI to turn it off. I guess if you knew where to look through the files you could turn it off via a configuration file.

Re:Nice one

[hairyfeet]

You got it back asswards friend, Opera MINI does the whole "go through Opera servers" thing whereas opera MOBILE only does so if you activate turbo.

Re:Nice one

[Lennie]

Actually you can't turn it off, because Opera Mini isn't a real browser, that is the whole point of Opera Mini. It is just a client which displays what the Opera server prerendered.

Re:Nice one

[moronoxyd]

There is no 'Opera Mobile Mini'.
Opera Mobile and Opera Mini are two distinctive products.

Re:Nice one

[del_diablo]

Which is also why its allowed into Apples App Store, because it does under no circumstances execute any script by itself, its just streaming it.

Re:Rockmelt

[sammyF70]

wtf is rockmelt?

Bad decision

[Centurix]

I'm sure they could have picked up Internet Explorer for a steal. Imagine the positive effect on the stock price!

And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook to buy Western Digital. Because they're going to need all those drives to store EVERY. FUCKING. KEYSTROKE.

Warning to Fastmail users

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera owns Fastmail. Do you want Facebook to own your email?

Re:Warning to Fastmail users

[Anonymous Coward]

As a paying member of Fastmail.fm, I'll be the first to cancel if Facebook takes ownership.

I hope not

[alphabetsoup]

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

Re:I hope not

[cparker15]

In Preferences, on the General tab, check the box to prevent tabs from loading until they're activated. Almost makes Firefox feel like a lightweight browser.

Also, this add-on helps mitigate Firefox's chronic memory leak problem: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/memory-restart/

Re:Rockmelt

[inasity_rules]

I hope not. I actually like Opera.

I really hope not.

[Daneurysm]

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.

Re:Rockmelt

[lightknight]

Indeed. This is a Merger / Acquisition that, from a quality of life standpoint, I do not prefer to see.

Opera Mobile is...a very nice browser on my Droid. A very, very nice browser. I'd like to keep it that way (the thought of Facebook posting to my wall with updates based off of my latest webpage viewings is more than a little disturbing; "lightknight said he would be at Ken's BBQ by 5:00PM, but we can see that he accessed Google Maps 21 minutes ago, and his GPS / location shows him at least 47 minutes away. -> 5:01 PM").

I wouldn't put it past Opera to allow it

[game kid]

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.

Better targets

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Better targets

[WrongSizeGlass]

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.

It's not really about fast, though piss poor performance would be a problem. It's about not having to develop a brand new mobile app/Facebook-content-delivery-app. Opera has 'mobile' and 'mini'. One of which (mini?) does all it's work on the Opera servers. This would let Facebook see everything you do ... and I mean everything. That fits perfectly with their current mission of harvesting anything and everything they can about their users.

Re:Rockmelt

[1u3hr]

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.

Re:Rockmelt

[buddhaunderthetree]

You like Opera? I love Opera. I've been using Opera since way back at version 2.0. Remember the browser that would fit on a floppy? I even paid for it. Sure, it's not perfect but it's pretty darn good. Now it's endanger of being taken over by a company I personally don't use and can't stand. I would have rather seen it die back in the 90s than to me such an ignominious fate.

Possibly adios...

[AliasMarlowe]

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).

Re:Rockmelt

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, if Opera does get acquired by a huge corporation with a strong interest in gathering as much information as possible about you, you can always just switch to Chrome!

Re:Rockmelt

[moronoxyd]

Opera browsers already have a filtering mechanism build in. What they are missing is a list of stuff to filter.

Just search the web for an urlfilter.ini, download that, put it on your Android device and point Opera Mobile to it.

Re:No!

[bill_mcgonigle]

My, the spammers have mod points as well.

Best to just reset the password on those accounts.

Re:Rockmelt

[kyrio]

I'll go back to IE.

Re:Rockmelt

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Opera may be closed-source. But they deserve huge respect.
They invented tons of things we take for granted nowadays. Tabs, proper zooming, user scripts/styles, separate search field, mouse guestures (incl. rocker), pop-up blocking, privacy mode, built-in bittorrent client, you name it. And they haven’t stopped. I consider Unite a key feature that will become essential.
They also saved us from having to use IE6 in the dark ages after Netscape was murdered.
And it was the fastest browser for a loooong time. (Basically from the start up until Chrome forced Firefox to become faster.)

And Oprea Mobile is the rare case of a mobile browser that doesn’t suck.

If they had offered a Firefox-like Add-on system and done a similar marketing (think: Firefox logo), they would be the most popular browser instead today.