Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Tech Group Offers To Buy Opera; Board Endorses
jones_supa writes: There's been plenty of speculation around the future of web browser maker Opera, and now that looks like it will soon be resolved. Today the Norway-headquartered company confirmed that it has received a $1.2 billion acquisition offer from a group fronted by Chinese consumer tech companies Kunlun Tech and Qihoo 360. The deal is for 100% of the company, and it represents a 53% premium on the company's valuation based on its most recent trading price. Opera's board said in a statement (PDF) that it has "unanimously decided to recommend" its shareholders to accept the bid. The final deal is subject to government and shareholders' approvals.
Please no. Please? Opera is one of the few innovators in the browser space that manages to pack features without getting bloated.
So, it will now be the Beijing Opera!
If this goes through, Opera is getting ripped out of every computer I had it on. Time to go looking for a replacement browser.
The difference in culture surrounding privacy between the Chinese and Norwegians is the dark side of Earth's moon to Mercury's sun-side.
..the fat lady has sung.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Opela
$1.8 billion for a company that lost $51 million last year. Good investment.
I'd keep an eye on this in the next few weeks:
http://www.opera.com/privacy
Didn't Opera buy Fastmail a few years ago? As a long time Fastmail user, like so many other tech people, I'd worry about my email provider being controlled by the Chinese.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
China is due for a massive correction in the economy. Debt driven growth has reached saturation and from now on, we will see a lot of deleveraging and money being printed (ie. QE) to prevent deflation.
Acquisitions is one of the best ways to swap depreciating Yuan assets (to use as collateral) and turn them into foreign assets. As the likelihood that CNY will devalue increases, you will see more and more of these desperate deals.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
revive the Presto engine!
Seriously, I would hate the world where everything revolves around WebKit though I've got a sneaking suspicion we already live in it.
I made the switch to Chrome and have been using StrokeIt to get mouse gestures in it (avoiding the plugins that report your browsing). The side-benefit is that I get mouse-gestures for all apps on an app-by-app configurable basis and any gesture that I could possible want or conceive of.
Still miss some features from the old Opera, but 12 was just getting too long in the tooth and even it had gone backwards in some ways from 10.
Except they're actually doing what Opera promised when they switched to Webkit/Blink and are implementing all the features of Opera 12 into their browser. Even typing /. in the address field will take you to slashdot, like in the old days.
I'm worried about the footprint, though. Opera always excelled at using little resources and providing tons of features. Kind of makes you wish they used a different browser engine for vivaldi.
Vivaldi? A browser that sucks. Tried it, and it's crapware.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Sure. They might lose money on every user, but they will make it up on volume! Business School 101.
Trough its entire lifetime, Opera software has somehow always managed to claw in amazing deals or bundles, or getting paid good buck for bundled browsers.
They was the default JAVA browser for several years for phone, until the iPhone existed. The browser for the Nintendo Wii.
They also have a interesting purchase history, such as Skyfire(content delivery compression), AdColony, and more.
Technology wise they most likely burned out completely after releasing Opera 12. So its for the leftover talent, IP, and inhouse tech. Might even be just for the compression tech, aimed to be used for the continually growing Chinese marked.
Opera Mini intercepts all web traffic in order to reshape/recompress
It acts like a sort of "Man n the middle" for web traffic.
Put on your tinfoil hats boys and girls, this will be a wonderful ride.
PS: Also, think of all the Symbian(S60)/ASHA(S40)/NokiaX phones whose browser and store is handled by Opera now, by way of Microsoft...
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/flow/item/20265_Nokia_Store_to_be_replaced_by_.php
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Opera already was on its way into a death spiral. They decided they couldn't keep up with the pace development of other rendering engines with Presto, so they said they were going to clean-sheet remake Opera using Blink.
Well, what they really did was make a crappy Chromealike skin for Blink and give the middle finger to their loyal users. Why would you download or use this instead of Chrome/Chromium? It doesn't make sense.
Luckily, some of the original people have been actually working on a real "Opera on Blink" browser in the form of Vivaldi, which I'm really liking. Interface customization is getting better with every release, and it gives you lots of options to twiddle with (and can use some Chrome extensions). Highly recommended. I don't really know what anyone's use case for Opera would be, even on mobile it's basically just a barely modified Chrome. Maybe Opera Mini or something?
Sam
I start reading in Chinese.
You can still find Opera 12
Thanks for link, was going to offer my held full version of Opera 12. It works on most sites, just fine on /.
He objects to manga being considered child porn? Ain't my thing, but doesn't that make him "a sane human being"?
Why is it I can't find any references to the Tiananamen Square Massacre on the web anymore? Why do all references to "Taiwan" either refer to "Chinese Taipei" or just give a blank page? Too bad .. I really liked Opera.
I've been watching Opera.com for awhile now, it's never gone away.
https://www.robtex.com/en/advi...
Think I'll get rid of Opera before there are any more updates and move to the Vivaldi web browser (created by opera guys apparently). when the Chinese nation gets their hands on anything, 2 things generally happen: Attempts to make it cheaper at our expense, or attempts to get more from us, again at our expense. I'm not saying westerns don't do some of this too, but China has a lot more practice at it. QQ and WeChat are two good examples.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Really? I've been using it for a few months and I quite like it. It's FAST, very clear interface. Although...sometimes it's a little too clean; had to think where a few things were, but once I got over that. Plus it has a NoScript equivalent that makes Noscript look like kiddie scripts. Way more visibility and control overs scripting behavior than NoScript has.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
They do have older version for download from opera.com
http://www.opera.com/download/...
Revisionist History? In fact we were told Opera Blink would NOT have many of O12's features. It also took over 2 years for Opera to have functioning bookmarks while the Opera Devs repeatedly claimed that we actually don't need bookmarks, users don't use bookmarks, just use SpeedDial and Stash! Yaaaaay.
As it stands now, 4 years later. Opera 30+...? You still can't organize your extensions on the only place you are allowed to put them (the address bar).
If you want a browser that is actually customizable - your options are Firefox and yeah Firefox. It almost galls me to say that after being an Opera user from 2000 to late 2012.
Opera 12 was quite possibly the worst browser Opera has made in recent memory. Opera 10's development cycle was horrible - for most of it's existence you likely needed to use Opera 10.10 due to regressions and bugs. Opera 11's development cycle improved, then Opera 12 - bugs, regressions and the worst JavaScript engine out of all the browsers, including Opera 10 and 11.
I remained on 11.64 for years, but too many of my favorite sites stopped rendering correctly, so I had to try out other browsers, finally settling on PaleMoon. Your (and my) using IE11 on certain sites reminded me of the early Opera days, when I had to keep a copy of Netscape(!) around for sites that didn't work on Opera way back then. And, like you point out, Opera had a lightweight, speedy feel about it, not the ponderous feel of current browsers.
When did you try it? It sounds like they released the first beta in the beginning of November, the second beta in the middle of December, and they've been working on bug fixes since then. Their blog has several posts through January and this month talking about all of the fixes and improvements they're doing. The posts have well over 100 comments each, so people are actively helping them test. It sounds like they're trying to hit a deadline but I don't see any release date mentioned for the first stable version. I'll switch to Vivaldi regardless whenever the Opera deal goes through, but hopefully they're able to push out a good stable version by then. They show a lot of promise, so some random transsexual person online saying it sucks because they tried a pre-release version at some undetermined point in the future isn't exactly a great argument against using the browser (if you're wondering why it matters that you're a random "transsexual" person instead of just a random person, I would ask why you feel the need to point that fact out). I installed a version when it was initially announced and wasn't all that impressed, it had basic browser functionality, but I'm glad that they are working on it. I'm glad that anyone is working on alternative browsers, the more choice the better. The Brave browser looks interesting as well, but they just started distributing their own binaries instead of linking people to Github so they're probably a little farther behind the Vivaldi team in terms of getting to a stable version. But having features built-in to specifically block tracking and advertising is something that hopefully other people decide to emulate.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Vivaldi MUST hurry with it's stability and polish. I've been using the snapshot release(s) as my main browser for a couple months now, but still put up with a few stupid annoying bugs -- mainly extension-related. But I absolutely LOVE how customizable the interface is -- I was able to bring back my most-beloved Opera feature, tabs on the side! Everything else they're doing is so in that Opera Presto vein, that we Opera fans do truly now have a successor to the Opera Presto line. It'll be so much better once things stabilize!
Interesting. I have tried Otter before...but only for a small time. Think I'll test it out again (given they have an OS X port).
They do have older version for download from opera.com
http://www.opera.com/download/...
Every time Version 12 has tried to update it been from a redirect to Opera.com, the address is in my hosts file now, download the link given above for version 12.4
and do read the fact it's encrypted and requires the password: oldversion to install.
- Opera 12 updated on me once and there no warning it just took it upon itself to do.
- At one time (I reinstall my Win OS's regularly) for java to work with Opera 12, the new version had to be installed as well, while in a different directory it fixed Opera 12 somehow.
They do have older version for download from opera.com
http://www.opera.com/download/...
Every time Version 12 has tried to update it been from a redirect to Opera.com, the address is in my hosts file now, download the link given above for version 12.4
and do read the fact it's encrypted and requires the password: oldversion to install.
- Opera 12 updated on me once and there no warning it just took it upon itself to do.
Damnedest thing just happened, I clicked on the link posted and was taken here http://www.opera.com/download/... -all versions from 35 to 11 are listed for download and for all OS's, so I don't what to say now.
My Bad, I misread your post as a question, and was your link I clicked on - nice find.
What Chinese companies with the government of China's backing is actually doing, is offloading crappy US dollar debt, before the big bang. They'll be buying all sorts of stuff with the US dollars the US government owes them and whole bunch of countries are going to get burdened with what looks to become a pretty vaporous currency, they are basically swapping dollar debt for capital assets (shh, the era of the petro-dollar has come to an end).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Revisionist History? In fact we were told Opera Blink would NOT have many of O12's features.
Yeah, a few versions into the switch.
Instagram is growing. Opera is dying. That is very different.
Full disclosure: I use (and highly recommend) Fastmail.
Bing Maps is better than Google Maps. I especially like the Bird Eye view feature it has. It's always kind of funny when someone asks how I made Google Maps do that, and then I have to tell them it's Bing...