4 ms·

Where to Opera get their money? Building and maintaining a browser seems like an expensive undertaking, and yet despite nobody I know using or even testing thei

Where to Opera get their money? Building and maintaining a browser seems like an expensive undertaking, and yet despite nobody I know using or even testing their websites on Opera, they've been actively developing and maintaining their browser for years.

stillmotion 9y ago
Opera has been using WebKit as their core engine for the past couple of years.
- michalstanko 9y ago
  Actually it's WebKit fork by Google called Blink. And I do use Opera as a default browser. The correct Ctrl+Tab behaviour which works like Alt+Tab (switch between the most recent tabs, with a small popup list of tabs) is the main reason for that. Much more productive for me than the usual "cycle over all of open tabs sequentially" behaviour that Chrome, Firefox, and everyone else have (except the Vivaldi browser).
  - Shinkirou 9y ago
    Firefox has a toggle of that in settings.
  - FroggyMan 9y ago
    There is an option to change that behavior in Firefox.
    - bigbugbag 9y ago
      There's tabmixplus that is way better than changing setting in about:config. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/
  - aembleton 9y ago
    In Firefox: 1. Go to about:config 2. Search for browser.ctrlTab.previews 3. Change value to `true` 4. Close tab Now your ctrl+tab should work as you want.
  - neotek 9y ago
    God I'd love to be able to do that in Chrome. Managing tabs totally fucking sucks, I hate that I can't combine multiple tabs into a single drop-down, or easily change the title of a tab, or tighten up the spacing, or anything I should be able to do in a modern browser.
    - oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
      Not being able to move tabs with the keyboard annoys me more than it should. Of course, I also wish the switching used the same method as window-switching, but I really wish tab/window/app switching was globally handled by the OS, and fully configurable in terms of behaviour.
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        Funny because back in the day there were no tabs. If you wanted multiple sites open you had multiple browser windows on the taskbar. That became unmanageable quite fast, so we got tabs. Note btw that even the earliest Opera had "tabs". It used MDI to provide multiple sites within a single browser window. This stuck with Opera all the way to version 12. After that they changed over to being a Chrome clone.
twhb 9y ago
Note that they no longer maintain their own rendering engine, they use Blink.
oblio 9y ago
Basically, ads. Or that's how it used to be. Search engine makers would bid for being set as the default search engine.
asherkin 9y ago
Opera is licensed as the embedded browser that powers most set-top boxes.
- pawadu 9y ago
  And gaming consoles and smart TVs
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    Which gaming consoles ? Nintendo dropped opera a while ago.
- izacus 9y ago
  And cars (Mazdas among others) :)
penetrarthur 9y ago
The company behind Opera browser owns a large ad network.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  I did not know "Golden Brick Capital Private Equity Fund I Limited Partnership" who owns the opera browser also owned a large ad network. Can you provide more details on this ?
  - penetrarthur 9y ago
    The company behind opera browser before opera sold the browser, sorry.
bigbugbag 9y ago
Opera ASA the company used to get its money by selling the browser, then moved to an ad supported browser (circa v5 IIRC), then they managed to secured enough funding through commercial partnership (mostly google to be the default search engine, same as firefox) and removed ads from the browser, another source of income source was opera mobile. A few years back the founders got removed and there was a shift to quarterly profit and they stopped developing and maintaining their own rendering engine and browser to basically become a skin for google chrome, saving costs. In the recent times they improved their skin status and tried to sell the whole package and managed to do last summer to a chinese consortium of investors. I suppose right now opera gets its money from the deep pockets of rich chinese investors, the current business model might have something to do with surveillance capitalism.

stillmotion 9y ago

Opera has been using WebKit as their core engine for the past couple of years.

michalstanko 9y ago
Actually it's WebKit fork by Google called Blink. And I do use Opera as a default browser. The correct Ctrl+Tab behaviour which works like Alt+Tab (switch between the most recent tabs, with a small popup list of tabs) is the main reason for that. Much more productive for me than the usual "cycle over all of open tabs sequentially" behaviour that Chrome, Firefox, and everyone else have (except the Vivaldi browser).
- Shinkirou 9y ago
  Firefox has a toggle of that in settings.
- FroggyMan 9y ago
  There is an option to change that behavior in Firefox.
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    There's tabmixplus that is way better than changing setting in about:config. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/
- aembleton 9y ago
  In Firefox: 1. Go to about:config 2. Search for browser.ctrlTab.previews 3. Change value to `true` 4. Close tab Now your ctrl+tab should work as you want.
- neotek 9y ago
  God I'd love to be able to do that in Chrome. Managing tabs totally fucking sucks, I hate that I can't combine multiple tabs into a single drop-down, or easily change the title of a tab, or tighten up the spacing, or anything I should be able to do in a modern browser.
  - oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
    Not being able to move tabs with the keyboard annoys me more than it should. Of course, I also wish the switching used the same method as window-switching, but I really wish tab/window/app switching was globally handled by the OS, and fully configurable in terms of behaviour.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Funny because back in the day there were no tabs. If you wanted multiple sites open you had multiple browser windows on the taskbar. That became unmanageable quite fast, so we got tabs. Note btw that even the earliest Opera had "tabs". It used MDI to provide multiple sites within a single browser window. This stuck with Opera all the way to version 12. After that they changed over to being a Chrome clone.

twhb 9y ago

Note that they no longer maintain their own rendering engine, they use Blink.

oblio 9y ago

Basically, ads. Or that's how it used to be. Search engine makers would bid for being set as the default search engine.

asherkin 9y ago

Opera is licensed as the embedded browser that powers most set-top boxes.

pawadu 9y ago
And gaming consoles and smart TVs
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Which gaming consoles ? Nintendo dropped opera a while ago.
izacus 9y ago
And cars (Mazdas among others) :)

penetrarthur 9y ago

The company behind Opera browser owns a large ad network.

bigbugbag 9y ago
I did not know "Golden Brick Capital Private Equity Fund I Limited Partnership" who owns the opera browser also owned a large ad network. Can you provide more details on this ?
- penetrarthur 9y ago
  The company behind opera browser before opera sold the browser, sorry.

bigbugbag 9y ago

Opera ASA the company used to get its money by selling the browser, then moved to an ad supported browser (circa v5 IIRC), then they managed to secured enough funding through commercial partnership (mostly google to be the default search engine, same as firefox) and removed ads from the browser, another source of income source was opera mobile. A few years back the founders got removed and there was a shift to quarterly profit and they stopped developing and maintaining their own rendering engine and browser to basically become a skin for google chrome, saving costs. In the recent times they improved their skin status and tried to sell the whole package and managed to do last summer to a chinese consortium of investors. I suppose right now opera gets its money from the deep pockets of rich chinese investors, the current business model might have something to do with surveillance capitalism.