4 ms·

Opera made the bet he proposed and lead themselves down a path to irrelevance.

by nly 9y ago

tolien 9y ago
Opera also lost most of their distinctiveness (i.e. features) along the way, laid off the bulk of their developers and sold out to a consortium including Qihoo360 (who, as well as the usual FUD—well-founded or not—about Chinese companies, were simultaneously found to be really bad at being a competent Certificate Authority). There’s plenty of scope for Mozilla to have used WebKit and not done the subsequent parts - Brave’s perhaps as good an example of that as any. Saying that, roc proposes porting XUL and XPCOM which are largely dead these days (the former by virtue of Firefox switching to WebExtensions). With browser.html for Servo being a thing, building Firefox’s UI in a way that it would work in WebKit is more possible than ever.
jasode 9y ago
As one of the few who paid for a web browser (paid $29 for Opera 7 in 2003), it looked to me like Opera really had no choice. There was a post from an Opera insider that I can't find but it was basically this: the web's complexity was evolving faster than the Opera team could maintain their proprietary Presto rendering engine. Switching away from Presto and building on WebKit was a basic matter of survival. Yes, they still became irrelevant but they would have also stayed irrelevant with their Presto engine. I agree with their assessment because around 2009, I started encountering more and more web pages that broke Opera. The Opera forums had more and more complaints from users reporting broken web pages. The Presto engine was becoming a liability. It was a vicious feedback loop because web authors wouldn't bother to test their sites with Opera ... which led to more user frustrations. I had to switch to Chrome to get a usable web surfing experience back. I originally paid for Opera because it had the fastest rendering engine which was very helpful for slow dialup connections. As Presto started falling further behind, that speed advantage was negated. Opera did try to some interesting features such as "Unite" which -- if you squint a certain way -- was a form of p2p decentralization. Yes, it's interesting to have a built-in web server in the browser but not enough people cared about it. The author's predictions for Firefox's Gecko engine meeting the same irrelevant fate as Presto didn't happen because unlike Opera, Mozilla from 2004-2014 got massive funding from Google. Mozilla could afford to keep programmers enhancing the Gecko engine. Opera couldn't do the same with Presto.
- BuuQu9hu 9y ago
  >Opera did try to some interesting features such as "Unite" which -- if you squint a certain way -- was a form of p2p decentralization. Yes, it's interesting to have a built-in web server in the browser but not enough people cared about it. Unite is a typical example of something that worked fine and disappear all the same. I haven't find any browser that surpass Opera 12 to this day. All the new "exciting stuff" are no use to me. I don't want to adapt to my browser, I want a browser that adapt to me.
- jgraham 9y ago
  (I worked at Opera during the WebKit/Chromium transition and work at Mozilla now. But in both cases I'm just a normal individal-contributor type employee with no special insight into strategy or decision making). There are always options. Opera could have doubled-down on Presto; putting more people on the core team, and focussing efforts to keep up with, and surpass, WebKit/Gecko. After all, that's basically the option that Mozilla took, which has resulted in Firefox Quantum. Would that have worked? It's hard to say. I would guess not, but I'm not sure the alternative really did either. Maybe Opera was already too far down the web-compat death spiral to engineer a way out. I don't know of a long-term bet like Rust that could have come good at the right time. Certainly the top-level culture of the organisations was different; Opera's leadership were very concerned with maintaining/maximising the value of their shares, whereas Mozilla is more clearly driven by ideological goals around the success of the open web. Opera also had a (historically well justified) belief that they could do more with fewer engineers than other compaines. That seemed to work up to a point, but once the difference in resources became too great it was hard to change the approach. Certainly one lesson is that it's hard, maybe impossible, to be a niche browser with a unique rendering engine. That is arguably a failing of the web, but nevertheless it's a strong indication that arguments that e.g. Mozilla should aim Firefox at small ideologically-driven markets are dangerous. One interpretation of the Opera history is that they were too focussed for too long on the subset of users who wanted a browser with lots of features and configuration possibilities. A product that suits those people might be actively offputting to other users, so inhibiting marketshare growth when faced with competition targetting simplicity and sane defaults.
  - 9y ago

Opera made the bet he proposed and lead themselves down a path to irrelevance.

by nly 9y ago

Opera made the bet he proposed and lead themselves down a path to irrelevance.

Opera also lost most of their distinctiveness (i.e. features) along the way, laid off the bulk of their developers and sold out to a consortium including Qihoo360 (who, as well as the usual FUD—well-founded or not—about Chinese companies, were simultaneously found to be really bad at being a competent Certificate Authority). There’s plenty of scope for Mozilla to have used WebKit and not done the subsequent parts - Brave’s perhaps as good an example of that as any. Saying that, roc proposes porting XUL and XPCOM which are largely dead these days (the former by virtue of Firefox switching to WebExtensions). With browser.html for Servo being a thing, building Firefox’s UI in a way that it would work in WebKit is more possible than ever.

jasode 9y ago

As one of the few who paid for a web browser (paid $29 for Opera 7 in 2003), it looked to me like Opera really had no choice. There was a post from an Opera insider that I can't find but it was basically this: the web's complexity was evolving faster than the Opera team could maintain their proprietary Presto rendering engine. Switching away from Presto and building on WebKit was a basic matter of survival. Yes, they still became irrelevant but they would have also stayed irrelevant with their Presto engine. I agree with their assessment because around 2009, I started encountering more and more web pages that broke Opera. The Opera forums had more and more complaints from users reporting broken web pages. The Presto engine was becoming a liability. It was a vicious feedback loop because web authors wouldn't bother to test their sites with Opera ... which led to more user frustrations. I had to switch to Chrome to get a usable web surfing experience back. I originally paid for Opera because it had the fastest rendering engine which was very helpful for slow dialup connections. As Presto started falling further behind, that speed advantage was negated. Opera did try to some interesting features such as "Unite" which -- if you squint a certain way -- was a form of p2p decentralization. Yes, it's interesting to have a built-in web server in the browser but not enough people cared about it. The author's predictions for Firefox's Gecko engine meeting the same irrelevant fate as Presto didn't happen because unlike Opera, Mozilla from 2004-2014 got massive funding from Google. Mozilla could afford to keep programmers enhancing the Gecko engine. Opera couldn't do the same with Presto.

BuuQu9hu 9y ago
>Opera did try to some interesting features such as "Unite" which -- if you squint a certain way -- was a form of p2p decentralization. Yes, it's interesting to have a built-in web server in the browser but not enough people cared about it. Unite is a typical example of something that worked fine and disappear all the same. I haven't find any browser that surpass Opera 12 to this day. All the new "exciting stuff" are no use to me. I don't want to adapt to my browser, I want a browser that adapt to me.
jgraham 9y ago
(I worked at Opera during the WebKit/Chromium transition and work at Mozilla now. But in both cases I'm just a normal individal-contributor type employee with no special insight into strategy or decision making). There are always options. Opera could have doubled-down on Presto; putting more people on the core team, and focussing efforts to keep up with, and surpass, WebKit/Gecko. After all, that's basically the option that Mozilla took, which has resulted in Firefox Quantum. Would that have worked? It's hard to say. I would guess not, but I'm not sure the alternative really did either. Maybe Opera was already too far down the web-compat death spiral to engineer a way out. I don't know of a long-term bet like Rust that could have come good at the right time. Certainly the top-level culture of the organisations was different; Opera's leadership were very concerned with maintaining/maximising the value of their shares, whereas Mozilla is more clearly driven by ideological goals around the success of the open web. Opera also had a (historically well justified) belief that they could do more with fewer engineers than other compaines. That seemed to work up to a point, but once the difference in resources became too great it was hard to change the approach. Certainly one lesson is that it's hard, maybe impossible, to be a niche browser with a unique rendering engine. That is arguably a failing of the web, but nevertheless it's a strong indication that arguments that e.g. Mozilla should aim Firefox at small ideologically-driven markets are dangerous. One interpretation of the Opera history is that they were too focussed for too long on the subset of users who wanted a browser with lots of features and configuration possibilities. A product that suits those people might be actively offputting to other users, so inhibiting marketshare growth when faced with competition targetting simplicity and sane defaults.
- 9y ago