6 ms·

Opera holds the web's most valuable secret

200 points by andyking 16y ago

zitterbewegung 16y ago
It sort of begs the question will opera still be relevant in a few years down the line as rendering on phones gets cheaper and faster.
- iwr 16y ago
  Advertising expands as to fill the available computing power. Content may too. There'll always be a place for an optimized browser, even if just to save battery life.
- jarek 16y ago
  It kinda does. With the technology they have right now, I'd take interactive-javascript-capable Opera Mobile over proxying Opera Mini any day. But if in a year, Opera Mobile can make, one way or another†, Facebook or new Twitter or Google-Wave-of-the-day or any modern website noticeably faster, I won't care much if it means my data is going through Opera's servers, just like I don't care my email is on Google's servers. [†] super-effective image and content compression? Elimination of multiple-server DNS lookups/requests/transfers? Compiling Javascript into a device's or Opera-internal "native" code on the server? I don't believe we've seen the last yet.
  - Indyan 16y ago
    "With the technology they have right now, I'd take interactive-javascript-capable Opera Mobile over proxying Opera Mini any day." Take a look at the Turbo feature in Opera Mobile. It's similar to the Turbo feature on desktop. Once again, data is being sent through the server and it is being compressed. However, Turbo is capable of handling interactive-web-content (JavaScripts) because the rendering part is still being done locally.
    - jarek 16y ago
      To be quite frank, I found that Opera Turbo rarely sped me up noticeably, and sometimes slowed me down. Just one user's experience in North America today, but there's definitely room for improvement.
      - Indyan 16y ago
        If your net speed is more than 512 KBPs you are not going to notice any improvements whatsover, rather (as you said) you might notice delays due to the increased overhead. However, on slower connnections the effect is marked. This is because a 100 KBps connection can download 100KB in 1 sec and 200 KB in 2 sec. On the other hand a 10 KBps connection will require 10 sec and 20 sec respectively. And, in this case, the effect of Opera's compression becomes noticeable. P.S. What Opera is doing is similar to what www.onspeed.com does. I used to use that during my dialup days, and it was a big big help.
- mfukar 16y ago
  I doubt it. Not only phones get increasingly powerful, but the core is also evolving, transitioning to IP and LTE being just around the corner; I believe pilot deployments have already started in the US and Japan.
  - famrey 16y ago
    The problem is that most of the world is not going to be using these powerful phones, and in the parts of the world where you can use them, operators are already killing unlimited data plans. You are living in a dream world if you think compression is going away any time soon.
- famrey 16y ago
  Yes, because Opera Mini can run on faster phones, but most sold phones are still the cheap ones, and that isn't changing any time soon. And with operators cutting down on data plans, limited bandwidth isn't going away any time soon either.
axod 16y ago
In summary, Opera does proxying and caching for its mobile browser. The article does very little to tell us why that's 'valuable' or indeed a secret.
- atlbeer 16y ago
  Page 2
  - axod 16y ago
    Yes, I read that. Care to summarize?
    - ohyes 16y ago
      You build an ad network that 'performs arbitrage on competing ad networks'. Opera makes money on the margin that potential advertisers save. This works because Opera controls the pipeline from web to phone.
      - alex_c 16y ago
        I might be particularly dense today, but I don't get the link between controlling the pipeline and building an arbitrage ad network. Why can't you do one without the other? Edit: to spell out my confusion. If you want to arbitrage ads, content providers would (presumably) need to include your ads in their content one way or another, so I don't see what advantage controlling the pipeline gives you. If you just want to inject ads into the content you're serving simply because you control the pipeline, then you can just as well inject regular ads, I don't see where the arbitrage part comes in.
        jarek 16y ago
        I haven't thought about this extensively, but quickly considering this, I'd imagine one would be able to target users with ad networks much as you can do that with ads today. Given a number of networks, display ads from the network most likely to get a click-through from the user under consideration.
aw3c2 16y ago
Opera Mobile will be released for Android tomorrow. I can't wait to finally have a great browser on my phone (the tab limitations of the default one make it unusable for me. All alternatives have major faults or drawbacks). http://www.opera.com/mobile/next/ http://www.opera.com/mobile/next/
- iron_ball 16y ago
  I'm a big Opera fan, but xScope has been great for me on Android.
- Indyan 16y ago
  You are right in being excited about it. It's a huge step up from the default browser and even Dolphin HD.
- eli 16y ago
  I'm not personally a huge fan of it, but the Dolphin browser offers a better tab interface (as well as other features) and has been out on Android for some time.
- rimantas 16y ago
  From video it looks like Opera Mobile for Andorid does not support resizing to fill the screen on double tap, you have to adjust it manually :(
stygianguest 16y ago
But what to do with such a cache? Build a new search engine to compete with google? I sincerely hope they will do that, but it cannot be easy. That said, if you have the cache, you might as well try. By the way, what about online banking etc. They are introducing yet another weak point by playing the middle man.
- pmjordan 16y ago
  They don't play MITM to https sites for the Turbo feature in Opera Mobile or Desktop. No idea what they do for Opera Mini.
  - jarek 16y ago
    Opera Mini is required to MITM by its design; it can't render HTML, only OPML fed to it by Opera's servers. I don't know what exactly the security implications are.
    - pmjordan 16y ago
      Yeah, the best I can come up with is that you have to trust them that the data never makes it to the disk. But then they don't seem to be disk caching anything at all.
    - iwr 16y ago
      Not to confuse OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language), used to aggregate RSS files with OBML (Opera Binary Markup Language). I was confused why or how OPML would serve Opera's purposes in this instance.
      - jarek 16y ago
        Sorry about that -- I was wrongly convinced the Opera technology was called OPML, too. I was a little bit surprised by lack of Opera-centric results when googling it...
- Indyan 16y ago
  Quote: "All communication between the Opera Mini servers and the Opera Mini client on your phone is encrypted?" Source: http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2010/04/15/public-wifi http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2010/04/15/public-wifi So basically, as long as Opera's security is ok, we are ok. However, if someone manages to find a hole, we might be screwed. But, how practical is it to launch an attack on a mobile webbrowser that is possibly using encrypted WiFi along with a encrypted communication channel? May be someone else can shed more light on this.
dtf 16y ago
Opera Mini on the iPhone 4 is a pretty bad experience. Hope they get time to update it soon.
- moxiemk1 16y ago
  Indeed: the article claimed Opera mini made mobile Safari feel painful to use, which in my experience is patently false. It is only occasionally noticeably faster, and the rendering is far worse. Mobile Safari is great because it actually renders sites appropriately. Opera mini is great because it's faster than your built-in phone browser, but it doesn't compete with real browsers even when it's marginally faster.
  - isani 16y ago
    Opera mini tends to jumble pages in unpredictable ways. The way it works is they transform the page into an intermediary format and transmit that to the phone. I don't think Opera has ever documented in depth what kinds of changes happen in the process.
- Indyan 16y ago
  Opera Mobile is the real mobile browser for smartphones. However, Opera can't develop O Mobile for iPhone due to App Store's TOS. Opera Mini can't handle modern websites using AJAX etc. because it can't render anything locally. It simply parses the data sent to it by the servers, which are responsible for rendering the website and compressing it. Also, the speed benefits are significant, only if you are on a slow connection.
  - joshd 16y ago
    Opera Mini stores the page state on their servers. If you click on a JS link then the Opera Mini client treats it like a new page load, but the server is just executing the JS and resending the page.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Opera Mini on the iPhone 4 is a pretty bad experience. What they say about the economics of mobile bandwidth and computing power vs. server bandwidth/CPU rings true, however. The trick would be to optimize the rendering for specific mobile browsers. One could even use the "native" rendering engine to do this. Apple should implement this trick for mobile Safari, optimized for the specific screen sizes of the various iDevices. Not only would this save rendering time and battery power on those devices, it would enable yet another advertising strategy for them.
ashish_0x90 16y ago
I am wondering though how the content providers themselves will react to opera deciding ad strategy on content provided by them if this happens. Right now opera is stripping all the ads and so even now content providers are only getting traffic and are not actually making money by any ads that they may be serving or any other content monetization strategy. How much benefit the providers will get really by opera's this move if any? Will the providers be then asked to pay to be in control of ads served on their content? Will they will need adapt to different ads system if the user is using opera as compared to some other browser?
celticjames 16y ago
There's another company, Skyfire, that's been pushing a similar solution for the past few years. I've never met anyone who actually uses it.
- famrey 16y ago
  That could be because Skyfire is, frankly, crap.
thezilch 16y ago
For those, like myself, that were wondering why there is talk about Opera Mobile being released, tomorrow, for Android -- I thought I already have Opera on my phone. After brief gleaning, I have Opera Mini, and here is what to expect with Opera Mobile: http://www.opera.com/mobile/specs/ http://www.opera.com/mobile/specs/ -- mostly just the rendering engine being available to the device, as opposed to being server based.
tzury 16y ago
I really do not see how this all proxy thing makes it "most valuable secret"
- famrey 16y ago
  Maybe you should read the article, then?
BerislavLopac 16y ago
Funny thing is that, as bandwidth keeps increasing, server side caching will be less and less meaningful.
DjDarkman 16y ago
Opera Mini is a HTML/Image viewer, not a real browser, it's too crippled to be called a web browser. Comparing Opera's cache to Google's cache is not a good idea, they work differently.
- famrey 16y ago
  Opera Mini browses the web. It's a browser.

200 points by andyking 16y ago

It sort of begs the question will opera still be relevant in a few years down the line as rendering on phones gets cheaper and faster.

iwr 16y ago
Advertising expands as to fill the available computing power. Content may too. There'll always be a place for an optimized browser, even if just to save battery life.
jarek 16y ago
It kinda does. With the technology they have right now, I'd take interactive-javascript-capable Opera Mobile over proxying Opera Mini any day. But if in a year, Opera Mobile can make, one way or another†, Facebook or new Twitter or Google-Wave-of-the-day or any modern website noticeably faster, I won't care much if it means my data is going through Opera's servers, just like I don't care my email is on Google's servers. [†] super-effective image and content compression? Elimination of multiple-server DNS lookups/requests/transfers? Compiling Javascript into a device's or Opera-internal "native" code on the server? I don't believe we've seen the last yet.
- Indyan 16y ago
  "With the technology they have right now, I'd take interactive-javascript-capable Opera Mobile over proxying Opera Mini any day." Take a look at the Turbo feature in Opera Mobile. It's similar to the Turbo feature on desktop. Once again, data is being sent through the server and it is being compressed. However, Turbo is capable of handling interactive-web-content (JavaScripts) because the rendering part is still being done locally.
  - jarek 16y ago
    To be quite frank, I found that Opera Turbo rarely sped me up noticeably, and sometimes slowed me down. Just one user's experience in North America today, but there's definitely room for improvement.
    - Indyan 16y ago
      If your net speed is more than 512 KBPs you are not going to notice any improvements whatsover, rather (as you said) you might notice delays due to the increased overhead. However, on slower connnections the effect is marked. This is because a 100 KBps connection can download 100KB in 1 sec and 200 KB in 2 sec. On the other hand a 10 KBps connection will require 10 sec and 20 sec respectively. And, in this case, the effect of Opera's compression becomes noticeable. P.S. What Opera is doing is similar to what www.onspeed.com does. I used to use that during my dialup days, and it was a big big help.
mfukar 16y ago
I doubt it. Not only phones get increasingly powerful, but the core is also evolving, transitioning to IP and LTE being just around the corner; I believe pilot deployments have already started in the US and Japan.
- famrey 16y ago
  The problem is that most of the world is not going to be using these powerful phones, and in the parts of the world where you can use them, operators are already killing unlimited data plans. You are living in a dream world if you think compression is going away any time soon.
famrey 16y ago
Yes, because Opera Mini can run on faster phones, but most sold phones are still the cheap ones, and that isn't changing any time soon. And with operators cutting down on data plans, limited bandwidth isn't going away any time soon either.

axod 16y ago

In summary, Opera does proxying and caching for its mobile browser. The article does very little to tell us why that's 'valuable' or indeed a secret.

atlbeer 16y ago
Page 2
- axod 16y ago
  Yes, I read that. Care to summarize?
  - ohyes 16y ago
    You build an ad network that 'performs arbitrage on competing ad networks'. Opera makes money on the margin that potential advertisers save. This works because Opera controls the pipeline from web to phone.
    - alex_c 16y ago
      I might be particularly dense today, but I don't get the link between controlling the pipeline and building an arbitrage ad network. Why can't you do one without the other? Edit: to spell out my confusion. If you want to arbitrage ads, content providers would (presumably) need to include your ads in their content one way or another, so I don't see what advantage controlling the pipeline gives you. If you just want to inject ads into the content you're serving simply because you control the pipeline, then you can just as well inject regular ads, I don't see where the arbitrage part comes in.
      - jarek 16y ago
        I haven't thought about this extensively, but quickly considering this, I'd imagine one would be able to target users with ad networks much as you can do that with ads today. Given a number of networks, display ads from the network most likely to get a click-through from the user under consideration.

aw3c2 16y ago

Opera Mobile will be released for Android tomorrow. I can't wait to finally have a great browser on my phone (the tab limitations of the default one make it unusable for me. All alternatives have major faults or drawbacks). http://www.opera.com/mobile/next/ http://www.opera.com/mobile/next/

iron_ball 16y ago
I'm a big Opera fan, but xScope has been great for me on Android.
Indyan 16y ago
You are right in being excited about it. It's a huge step up from the default browser and even Dolphin HD.
eli 16y ago
I'm not personally a huge fan of it, but the Dolphin browser offers a better tab interface (as well as other features) and has been out on Android for some time.
rimantas 16y ago
From video it looks like Opera Mobile for Andorid does not support resizing to fill the screen on double tap, you have to adjust it manually :(

stygianguest 16y ago

But what to do with such a cache? Build a new search engine to compete with google? I sincerely hope they will do that, but it cannot be easy. That said, if you have the cache, you might as well try. By the way, what about online banking etc. They are introducing yet another weak point by playing the middle man.

pmjordan 16y ago
They don't play MITM to https sites for the Turbo feature in Opera Mobile or Desktop. No idea what they do for Opera Mini.
- jarek 16y ago
  Opera Mini is required to MITM by its design; it can't render HTML, only OPML fed to it by Opera's servers. I don't know what exactly the security implications are.
  - pmjordan 16y ago
    Yeah, the best I can come up with is that you have to trust them that the data never makes it to the disk. But then they don't seem to be disk caching anything at all.
  - iwr 16y ago
    Not to confuse OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language), used to aggregate RSS files with OBML (Opera Binary Markup Language). I was confused why or how OPML would serve Opera's purposes in this instance.
    - jarek 16y ago
      Sorry about that -- I was wrongly convinced the Opera technology was called OPML, too. I was a little bit surprised by lack of Opera-centric results when googling it...
Indyan 16y ago
Quote: "All communication between the Opera Mini servers and the Opera Mini client on your phone is encrypted?" Source: http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2010/04/15/public-wifi http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2010/04/15/public-wifi So basically, as long as Opera's security is ok, we are ok. However, if someone manages to find a hole, we might be screwed. But, how practical is it to launch an attack on a mobile webbrowser that is possibly using encrypted WiFi along with a encrypted communication channel? May be someone else can shed more light on this.

dtf 16y ago

Opera Mini on the iPhone 4 is a pretty bad experience. Hope they get time to update it soon.

moxiemk1 16y ago
Indeed: the article claimed Opera mini made mobile Safari feel painful to use, which in my experience is patently false. It is only occasionally noticeably faster, and the rendering is far worse. Mobile Safari is great because it actually renders sites appropriately. Opera mini is great because it's faster than your built-in phone browser, but it doesn't compete with real browsers even when it's marginally faster.
- isani 16y ago
  Opera mini tends to jumble pages in unpredictable ways. The way it works is they transform the page into an intermediary format and transmit that to the phone. I don't think Opera has ever documented in depth what kinds of changes happen in the process.
Indyan 16y ago
Opera Mobile is the real mobile browser for smartphones. However, Opera can't develop O Mobile for iPhone due to App Store's TOS. Opera Mini can't handle modern websites using AJAX etc. because it can't render anything locally. It simply parses the data sent to it by the servers, which are responsible for rendering the website and compressing it. Also, the speed benefits are significant, only if you are on a slow connection.
- joshd 16y ago
  Opera Mini stores the page state on their servers. If you click on a JS link then the Opera Mini client treats it like a new page load, but the server is just executing the JS and resending the page.
stcredzero 16y ago
Opera Mini on the iPhone 4 is a pretty bad experience. What they say about the economics of mobile bandwidth and computing power vs. server bandwidth/CPU rings true, however. The trick would be to optimize the rendering for specific mobile browsers. One could even use the "native" rendering engine to do this. Apple should implement this trick for mobile Safari, optimized for the specific screen sizes of the various iDevices. Not only would this save rendering time and battery power on those devices, it would enable yet another advertising strategy for them.

ashish_0x90 16y ago

I am wondering though how the content providers themselves will react to opera deciding ad strategy on content provided by them if this happens. Right now opera is stripping all the ads and so even now content providers are only getting traffic and are not actually making money by any ads that they may be serving or any other content monetization strategy. How much benefit the providers will get really by opera's this move if any? Will the providers be then asked to pay to be in control of ads served on their content? Will they will need adapt to different ads system if the user is using opera as compared to some other browser?

celticjames 16y ago

There's another company, Skyfire, that's been pushing a similar solution for the past few years. I've never met anyone who actually uses it.

famrey 16y ago
That could be because Skyfire is, frankly, crap.

thezilch 16y ago

For those, like myself, that were wondering why there is talk about Opera Mobile being released, tomorrow, for Android -- I thought I already have Opera on my phone. After brief gleaning, I have Opera Mini, and here is what to expect with Opera Mobile: http://www.opera.com/mobile/specs/ http://www.opera.com/mobile/specs/ -- mostly just the rendering engine being available to the device, as opposed to being server based.

tzury 16y ago

I really do not see how this all proxy thing makes it "most valuable secret"

famrey 16y ago
Maybe you should read the article, then?

BerislavLopac 16y ago

Funny thing is that, as bandwidth keeps increasing, server side caching will be less and less meaningful.

DjDarkman 16y ago

Opera Mini is a HTML/Image viewer, not a real browser, it's too crippled to be called a web browser. Comparing Opera's cache to Google's cache is not a good idea, they work differently.

famrey 16y ago
Opera Mini browses the web. It's a browser.