9 ms·

FastMail staff purchase the business from Opera

238 points by robmueller 13y ago

unknownian 13y ago
Does that mean myopera mail is being shuttered? I hope not. It was like a free version of fastmail.
nly 13y ago
This is more interesting for what it means for Opera than for what it means to Fastmail. First they abandon their browser engine, now a top-notch webmail offering. What do Opera even offer these days that you can't get elsewhere? What 'long term vision' is Rob speaking of?
- benologist 13y ago
  Unless Opera are building themselves their own little Firefox OS kind of thing they're pretty much fucked moving forward. On the desktop their move to webkit successfully destroyed every reason to use Opera and doesn't measure up against rivals, and they've been netscaped out of mobile.
  - jarcoal 13y ago
    I don't think many people used Opera because of it's rendering engine; they used it because of the GUI and high-level features. Moving to webkit just let them focus on what actually made them unique to their customers.
    - yareally 13y ago
      I think you're generally correct about users not caring about the rendering engine for the most part. I wouldn't care at all that they ditched Presto if it meant they retained all the previous features and user interface they had before transitioning. However, I am worried that is unlikely to happen. Looking at the course Blink based Opera has taken thus far, it doesn't look like they're focusing on keeping current users happy (any new user base is going to be an uphill climb). It's still new, but as a consistent Opera user for almost a decade, I'm very skeptical of them keeping all the previous customization as well as avoiding "Chromisms" in the UI.
      - Osiris 13y ago
        I still use Opera 12 because of the lack of features in the new version. My biggest pet peevs: Ctrl+Tab behavior (Opera default was 'previous tab' now it's 'next tab') and no thumbnails tabs on the left, and they removed the email client.
        yareally 13y ago
        Yeah, I dislike both of those changes as well. I have a pretty long list of things Opera needs to add to versions beyond 12 before I will update to their Blink version. Until then, I'm still using 12 as well.
        apa-sl 13y ago
        I'm also sticking to Opera 12, missing quite a lot of features in the Blink version...
        dgesang 13y ago
        http://operabrowser.wikispaces.com/Features http://operabrowser.wikispaces.com/Features
        nly 13y ago
        > and they removed the email client. And the IRC client and BitTorrent client?
        Freaky 13y ago
        While it's lacking the menu, there is at least opera://flags/#activation-order-tab-cycling now.
    - benologist 13y ago
      I agree the rendering engine isn't important, but when they threw out Presto they also threw out most of the features and innovations they created and turned Opera into a sort of half-assed Chrome.
      - Aldo_MX 13y ago
        Porting features usually mean to redesign them to match the new codebase/paradigm. It's not as simple as copy/pasting code...
        Dylan16807 13y ago
        Nobody said it was simple. The problem is that they shouldn't have tossed out the old code if they weren't going to be able to replace it.
        Aldo_MX 13y ago
        So you are suggesting them to maintain two different codebases during the transition rather than focus all their efforts to the new version to make the transition as short as possible? IMHO they did the correct choice, every new version Opera will difference itself more and more of Chromium. You can continue to use Opera 12.16 until they take the decision to pull the trigger to completely kill 12.16 auto-updating it... Remember the transition from Firefox 3.6 to the current Firefox, they didn't kill 3.6 until they reached version 12.
        benologist 13y ago
        There was literally nothing to stop them delaying the release by 1 - 2 months and delivering more than a bare-bones Chrome. Opera sets their own schedule beholden to nobody.
    - _sabe_ 13y ago
      I used to use Opera because of it's privacy features. Being able to have different configuration of javascript, cookies, referals, content blocking and so on. Now with Opera 16 all these features are gone. How do you increase you're competitive abilities by removing everything that made you unique when you're already the underdog? :S
      - tripzilch 13y ago
        You forget to mention that they are "per site" preferences. But wtf they removed this too?? What is wrong with those people?
      - mcovey 13y ago
        Per-site preferences will be returning to Opera in a future version, so don't lose hope.
    - mih 13y ago
      The Myopera forums are rife with users complaining about missing features in the Opera 15+. Any unique features which distinguished Opera have been axed and most solutions seem to point towards using browser addons to accomplish what was previously in-built. They might have gained a few users, but it appears the majority of the current userbase will be sticking with Opera 12 for the time being.
      - morkbot 13y ago
        Yes, but from what I understand their plan is to bring back most of the features in the future (I remember them mentioning specifically bookmarks, opera link and tab thumbnails), until then: Opera 12. On the other side Chrome based Opera is also starting to look pretty good in it's own rights: it's fast and snappy, mouse gestures are there if I'm not mistaken, page stack (or whatever the name is) is cool. If I would to choose between Chrome and Opera 16 now I would go with the latter (also because Chrome really pushes too much Google on the user).
      - tripzilch 13y ago
        I heard that they ditched the fit-to-width feature (ctrl-F11), do you know if this is true? It's one of those features other browsers simply do not have (Opera has a couple more but this one's pretty unique) that I really do use several times a day, and I'm not "upgrading" until I know they won't take that away. Not that it matters too much, features or not, I'm thinking to switch to Firefox because these are times no longer to be using closed-source software.
        gsnedders 13y ago
        Fit-to-width did all kinds of magic at a layout engine level — it's not that simple to just reimplement on top of a new engine. And then there's the question as to whether Google would let an implementation would ever get upstreamed to Blink.
        sp332 13y ago
        Why would Google not want such a cool feature?
    - mcovey 13y ago
      They didn't just switch to webkit, they killed the product and made a chromium fork, and called it "Opera."
  - tagawa 13y ago
    An increasing proportion of Opera's (growing) revenue comes from advertising (they bought a few agencies recently) and their share price continues to climb. I don't think they have many problems moving forward, it's just less visible than their traditional consumer-facing domain. Still a shame they dropped Presto, though.
    - benologist 13y ago
      Is that separate from their browser stuff?
      - mrweasel 13y ago
        More or less I think, they bought AdMarvel.
        frabcus 13y ago
        Interesting - perhaps it has the same market as Opera's browsers used to (e.g. carriers)? As a geek, I often forget that a shared market can indicate why a company is doing something new, as well as a shared product.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - muyuu 13y ago
      Doesn't make much sense to ditch webmail anyway. There are many ways in which webmail can help and promote their other products.
  - manojlds 13y ago
    The recently released Coast for iPad is interesting - coastbyopera.com/ I am thinking Opera want to be acquired?
    - nly 13y ago
      > I am thinking Opera want to be acquired? Possibly. They were uncannily quick in adopting Blink. The series of events seemed to be Opera->WebKit, Google->Blink, Opera->Blink... so perhaps they want to get cosy with Google? Although, I can't see what G would want with them. I think it's also known that, sometime around IE7, Microsoft tried to acquire them. Microsoft have long since made their bed though... unless they want a better mobile browser. Either way, it'd make total sense for Opera to ditch their email operation if they were looking to be acquired by a business with an established email product already. Especially when many Fastmail customers are there because of their particular niche in service. Perhaps it's the new Blackberry group? Dark horse! :P
      - Indyan 13y ago
        Two clarifications: - Opera never switched to Webkit. Opera had switched to Chromium, which initially used Webkit. So, it's no surprise that Opera adopted Blink. - Opera has publicly commented it was aware of Google's plans for Blink, and that information was a factor in the decision to switch to the Chromium engine.
    - kijin 13y ago
      There were rumors last year that Facebook might acquire Opera. They didn't. But maybe someone else will. As a FastMail user I was very concerned with last year's rumors. Now I don't care because FastMail doesn't have anything to do with Opera anymore.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  - thaumaturgy 13y ago
    I hope not. I've just switched (long-term, I hope) to Opera out of complete disgust with Google and a lingering disgust with Firefox. It's nice to have choices.
  - vijucat 13y ago
    > and they've been netscaped out of mobile. Not sure what you mean. Just FYI : at least on Android phones, among FF, Chrome, Opera (and the default browser), Opera's text flow is the best by far. You can zoom in and read any article on any site, and it does just the right thing. There is honestly an element of fear when you use Firefox for the same thing: it's absolutely unpredictable what it will do when you zoom in. I can sympathize with the developers since the re-layout of a page, figuring out whether the user wants to zoom in on the text or the image, etc; may be quite difficult. Opera Mobile has seemingly perfected this over years and years.
    - iSnow 13y ago
      >There is honestly an element of fear when you use Firefox for the same thing I don't know what you mean. No Android browser matches mobile Safari for the slickness of zooming into pages, but FF mobile just works fine.
      - Dylan16807 13y ago
        Does your mobile firefox give different sizes to every comment on HN because it thinks longer sentences need bigger fonts? Mine does.
        vijucat 13y ago
        Yes, this is just one example. To OP, if he has bothered to check this deep into replies, does Safari do text reflow upon zooming in? Should I attach screenshots to explain?
  - sudomal 13y ago
    Developing an in-house browser engine is rather expensive. It's a moving target with constant pressure to better rivals. There's a need to patch an infinite number of websites, which don't care that you exist. I can understand why they switched and focused on value added features.
    - tripzilch 13y ago
      > I can understand why they switched and focused on value added features. But they didn't. They just dropped the browser engine.
- a3n 13y ago
  > What 'long term vision' is Rob speaking of? To spend more time with their family?
- nej 13y ago
  I can't speak for Opera but if you take a look at their latest browser in iOS (only available for the iPad) it will give you some hope in the direction Opera is going. The browser, "Coast" as they call it is a pretty nifty, well crafted and thought out browser. My guess is they're trying going for a niche product and are focusing on what's important to them rather than try to get their feet wet in every market.
- mverwijs 13y ago
  I remember reading that one of the big money makers is Opera Mini. All the content viewed by that browser comes through proxies run by Opera. This means a HUGE amount of data that Opera can monetize on.
  - antocv 13y ago
    Monetize that data like selling it to clients or selling their customers data about their data to them? Will opera run some analysis and sell that?
frenger 13y ago
Please please make this an excuse for a move away from hosting in the USA. A claim to respect privacy necessitates that.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- chrischen 13y ago
  The stance you should take on privacy in the cloud is that the USA just did a bad job hiding the fact that you had none.
  - frenger 13y ago
    Sick of this nihilist attitude. > the USA just did a bad job hiding the fact that you had none. Er, no - the USA are the main ones wholesale intercepting everyone's shit - I'm not a US citizen and I don't like it in principle. I did have a pretty good expectation of privacy until they started doing that, because no-one else has the resources to do a similar whole-take surveillance effort. Anyway, I signed up for Fastmail because I thought it was foreign to the USA (though later found out the servers are hosted in NYC - doh). But seriously, I'd love to see an end to the "oh well" attitude. The stance I do take is "you're spying on and profiling me? Fuck you I'm leaving". And that helps me sleep at night, for better or worse.
    - chrischen 13y ago
      It's not an "oh well" attitude. In fact, I'm advocating that if you actually want your data private and secure, you shouldn't be hosting on someone else's computer at all! You shouldn't be practicing security through good-will (good will assurances by a party that they aren't snooping). I send most of emails through gmail because I don't care if the NSA reads them. For my cross-border drug deals, I use carrier pigeons with encrypted handwritten messages.
      - frenger 13y ago
throwawayyyz 13y ago
I love Fastmail and have been a paid user for many years now, but I hate the new AJAXy interface, in particular the infinite scroll as currently implemented. Slow, annoying, and makes it difficult to reach old emails.
- tagawa 13y ago
  You can select the classic interface on the login page. I agree, it feels more usable than the fancy version.
- cdvonstinkpot 13y ago
  Yeah, the new interface is missing a few essential things the classic interface has, so I keep the box checked too. Hope it doesn't get phased out- would be mad without the classic interface.
- whichdan 13y ago
  Fastmail has one of the few interfaces that gets infinite scrolling /right/. The outer mailbox div has overflow-y: auto; and the inner div is the combined height of every message in that folder -- my inbox has 11381 messages, and the height is 364192px. When the scrollbar is moved, JS automatically determines which messages to load. Messages themselves are tiny AJAX requests that take less than 100ms each. This is from the perspective of using Chrome on high end hardware, but I couldn't ask for a better web interface. That said, they aren't joking about needing a new mobile interface: the current one is usable, but definitely lacks the same polish as the desktop version.
  - lessnonymous 13y ago
    That infinite scrolling is AWESOME. I absolutely HATE everyone else's version that makes dragging the scrollbar useless as it jumps around.
    - masnick 13y ago
      I agree. The infinite scroll is really well-implemented in FastMail. It's much better than the pagination in Gmail, which makes it extremely difficult to jump, say, 2/3 of the way down in a search or label with thousands of hits.
jimmcslim 13y ago
Have been a paying customer of Fastmail.fm since early 2003. It just works and I hope it continues to for many years to come!
coffeecheque 13y ago
I'm a big fan of Fastmail, and I'm tentatively excited about this announcement. Missing CardDAV/CalDav sync ability is sorely missing, so it's good to see the developers talking about it. I'd also like to see (and would pay for) options where the data is located in other countries, away from the United States. It's really symbolic, but also practical: I'd like my data closer to where I live.
- josteink 13y ago
  Seconding this. Currently I'm fine having that live in owncloud, but should fastmail start supporting it, I may want to sync these data-sets. Not sure I want to move everything into one place and one place only though. If it was one thing my migration from Google Apps taught me, it was that having too much stuff auto-integrated in one place makes it much harder to have control of your own data. It severely limits your options to mix and mash best of breed services as you see fit.
  - da_n 13y ago
    How do you find Owncloud, is it reliable enough? I have heard it has a lot of bugs, can be very slow and in rare instances deletes data at random which would be unacceptable to me. I am using Baikal for CardDav and CalDav which has been very reliable so far, and BitTorrent Sync for Dropbox replacement which is less reliable and has some bad bugs (one of which is it being closed source).
    - josteink 13y ago
      How do you find Owncloud, is it reliable enough? I have heard it has a lot of bugs, can be very slow and in rare instances deletes data Good question. I have mixed impressions of owncloud so far depending on what area of the product you are using. The good parts: Contact and calendering managament. Just works. Integrates nicely with Android, Thunderbird, etc. Not very good synching back to Google though. I don't really care about that, but now you know. The not so good parts: I tried running it on my NAS, because that would be the storage-backend for the file-sync service anyway. I quickly discovered that the code is not near efficient enough to be deployed on underpowered devices like this. It needs optimization, or to be put on proper hardware. I chose the latter and redeployed. On my NAS, with enough data getting synched across clients could take days. So don't even think about putting this on a Raspberry Pi or something silly like that. The worse: Using owncloud's files-module as a drop-in Dropbox replacement, you will be surprised by how well supported all kinds of platforms are. If you treat it as a Dropbox replacement though, you will encounter issues. I tried putting my code/project/build-folders under owncloud and hack away, much like I've done with Dropbox. Even with a limited amount of clients, you will quickly encounter at least some bugs. The most annoying thing I encountered was probably getting conflicts when only one of the clients had updated the file. The client updated the file, called back to owncloud with the changes, and then got a response back that this update cannot be done cleanly. It then proceeded to the code/build/project files involved in the conflict and rename the local and the "server"-version to $file.conflict345678543 & $file.conflict1234567 or something to that effect. Needless to say that broke my code, my build and needed to be cleaned up. If you think that sounds annoying, imagine it happening several times during a 30 minute coding session. So yeah. The owncloud file-service currently suffers and cannot be treated as a drop-in replacement for Dropbox. Hopefully it will get there, but outside coding, I haven't experienced anything like that and it seems to chug along just fine. With a high CPU-usage though. So yeah. There are good, not so good and directly bad things about it. If it fits your use-case is up to you.
D9u 13y ago
I've been a Fastmail user for years, ever since I realized that their web UI was compatible with my Windows Mobile Phone. (pre iPhone era) Here we are now, and the rest of the net has caught up to mobile access, mostly. Though my initial reasons for using Fastmail have become moot points, I'll continue to use my Fastmail accounts with fond memories and hope for improved resistance to governments' exceeding their mandates.
beagle3 13y ago
If anyone at Opera is reading this: Please open source Carakan and Presto - don't let them rot, and us hackers have what to learn with them (and potentially do with them). GPL is fine, and may let you still monetize it. (And ... it's not like it's giving you any advantage - you've switched away from both)
- telephonetemp 13y ago
  Opera Mini still uses Presto. It is quite popular still, especially where people can't get 3G or better coverage.
  - rplnt 13y ago
    And I don't know anyone (from the few people I know that use Opera) who switched to the new Opera (since it sucks).
  - beagle3 13y ago
    Is Carakan being used in anything other than older Desktop Operas?
- hotwatermusic 13y ago
  From this presentation (http://vimeo.com/73934576 http://vimeo.com/73934576): Presto don't go open source in the foreseeable future, cause Opera don't want to lose support contracts for the TV browsers. That's makes sense.
  - andybak 13y ago
    Would it not be possible to add some terms to the licence to protect that revenue stream in some way?
    - networked 13y ago
      Restricting commercial use would disqualify it from being "open source" according to the OSI's definition [1]. If you changed the text of the GNU GPL, the license proposed by the GGP, you would also no longer be able to call it the GPL since the text of the license itself is copyrighted and not free to edit (to, e.g., prevent fragmentation) [2]. If you did all that the source release could well be a net negative for whatever goodwill the FOSS community has for your company. What they could do instead is dual-license it under a strong copyleft license like the AGPL 3.0 and a proprietary license betting on companies being reluctant to share their source code. Still, it would hardly be to their advantage at all. [1] http://opensource.org/osd-annotated http://opensource.org/osd-annotated [2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL. Edit: clarified how the GPL can be changed.
breakupapp 13y ago
I use Opera just to maintain separate cookies haha.
- Osiris 13y ago
  I use it at work because it ignores the system policy against downloading exe files. I hate trying to download an installer and having Chrome tell me (after the fact) that the system blocked the file. Opera doesn't care and saves the file just fine.
- nikcub 13y ago
  You can do that with Chrome, Firefox and Safari as well - check out my project tmpbrowser, which is a simple app that creates temporary throwaway browser sessions: https://github.com/nikcub/tmpbrowser https://github.com/nikcub/tmpbrowser
- billpg 13y ago
  How to configure Firefox with multiple profiles... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5oubQ4kggs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5oubQ4kggs (I made this!)
dingaling 13y ago
During the Opera tenure, FastMail moved to new, larger premises in Melbourne and took on quite a few new staff. They did a lot of work on the My Opera Mail web client, which will hopefully be folded back into the main FM product. They also built-out data centre capacity, including facilities in Iceland. So all around I think FM benefited greatly from the three years under Opera, though I'm not convinced the reverse is true.
lubos 13y ago
the most annoying thing about fastmail is their high cost for storage. their new web-based client is top-notch performance-wise. a lot better than gmail.
antihero 13y ago
I'm looking forward to better mobile support. Currently I can't sync contacts at all because the only Android LDAP contacts app seems not to be purchasable.
- josteink 13y ago
  I went with contact-management (and calendar-management) via owncloud. There's two apps in the Play store, one for CardDAV[1] and one for CalDAV[2]. That setup works for me. [1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.carddav.Sync https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.cardd... [2]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.caldav.lib https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.calda...
  - antihero 13y ago
    I just wish OwnCloud wasn't a slow PHP script. Can FastMail sync with any cardDAV server? Because I might just write on of those or something.
autonomy77 13y ago
Not impressed with Fastmail - I tried their free offer, wasn't impressed, and didn't sign up for the paid service. I've since had over 100 (yup) emails telling me of my "OVERDUE PAYMENT" (the caps are theirs), and they ignore correspondence requesting that they stop. Marketing via harrassment - interesting tactic, and incredibly bad form, IMHO.
- dombili 13y ago
  > I've since had over 100 (yup) emails telling me of my "OVERDUE PAYMENT" (the caps are theirs), Oh god, yes. This was annoying as hell. I actually liked their service but at the end of the month I didn't think I was using email enough to justify paying 40 bucks a year, so I decided to keep using the one I got for free when I got a domain. But even if I was going to buy, I wouldn't have just because of this harrassment. Here's a screenshot from my inbox: http://i.imgur.com/meNhlAr.png http://i.imgur.com/meNhlAr.png (there are some more that couldn't fit into the screenshot)
  - Osmium 13y ago
    That's absolutely crazy. I'm a paying Fastmail customer, and that really puts me off. I'm "trialing" them for 6 months at the moment with a personal domain before I decide whether I want to permanently switch to them, and so far had been very impressed... but that makes me think twice. I hope they're paying attention to this!
  - autonomy77 13y ago
    While it's a relief that I'm not alone in this, it raises a concern that this policy of bludegoning people to sign up via email DOES appear to be a company policy. Plus, they refuse to even acknowledge emails on the subject. I cannot recommend them less. Shabby treatment of potential customers.
- nmjenkins 13y ago
  (I work for FastMail) Many apologies about this. It was due to an unexpected interaction with our billing system when we added the free trial functionality. We never intended to spam or harass people who decided FastMail wasn't for them. We fixed this about a month ago and overhauled the wording in our notices as well to make them friendlier and easier to understand.
drill_sarge 13y ago
I wonder what "strategic changes" they did at Opera? So far they have shut down all their interesting projects (like Opera Unite), their browser has been highly customizable (the UI, not even needing addons) which was abandoned completely in Opera 15. Now they have some half-assed Chrome clone for Desktop, Coast browser which is also nowhere near final, Opera Mobile (not mini) is getting more and more generic like all other mobile browsers...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
johnnymonster 13y ago
Is FastMail a joke? I get more storage for free at dropbox and sugarsync. What exactly is this service bringing to the table? It feels like a 1998 business model to me...
- masnick 13y ago
  A lot. http://www.maxmasnick.com/2013/07/19/fastmail/ http://www.maxmasnick.com/2013/07/19/fastmail/ HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6069944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6069944
- subsection1h 13y ago
  I don't require GBs of mail storage because my mail is automatically deleted before its 180 days old. Mail that's older than 180 days can be accessed by USG employees without a warrant. FastMail provides me with mail accounts for $10/year[2] that provide enough storage for 180 days and include required features like custom domain names, domain aliases, email aliases, etc. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/when-will-our-email-betray-us-email-privacy-primer-light-petraeus-saga https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/when-will-our-email-be... [2] https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/family.html https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/family.html

238 points by robmueller 13y ago

Does that mean myopera mail is being shuttered? I hope not. It was like a free version of fastmail.

nly 13y ago

This is more interesting for what it means for Opera than for what it means to Fastmail. First they abandon their browser engine, now a top-notch webmail offering. What do Opera even offer these days that you can't get elsewhere? What 'long term vision' is Rob speaking of?

benologist 13y ago
Unless Opera are building themselves their own little Firefox OS kind of thing they're pretty much fucked moving forward. On the desktop their move to webkit successfully destroyed every reason to use Opera and doesn't measure up against rivals, and they've been netscaped out of mobile.
- jarcoal 13y ago
  I don't think many people used Opera because of it's rendering engine; they used it because of the GUI and high-level features. Moving to webkit just let them focus on what actually made them unique to their customers.
  - yareally 13y ago
    I think you're generally correct about users not caring about the rendering engine for the most part. I wouldn't care at all that they ditched Presto if it meant they retained all the previous features and user interface they had before transitioning. However, I am worried that is unlikely to happen. Looking at the course Blink based Opera has taken thus far, it doesn't look like they're focusing on keeping current users happy (any new user base is going to be an uphill climb). It's still new, but as a consistent Opera user for almost a decade, I'm very skeptical of them keeping all the previous customization as well as avoiding "Chromisms" in the UI.
    - Osiris 13y ago
      I still use Opera 12 because of the lack of features in the new version. My biggest pet peevs: Ctrl+Tab behavior (Opera default was 'previous tab' now it's 'next tab') and no thumbnails tabs on the left, and they removed the email client.
      - yareally 13y ago
        Yeah, I dislike both of those changes as well. I have a pretty long list of things Opera needs to add to versions beyond 12 before I will update to their Blink version. Until then, I'm still using 12 as well.
      - apa-sl 13y ago
        I'm also sticking to Opera 12, missing quite a lot of features in the Blink version...
        dgesang 13y ago
        http://operabrowser.wikispaces.com/Features http://operabrowser.wikispaces.com/Features
      - nly 13y ago
        > and they removed the email client. And the IRC client and BitTorrent client?
      - Freaky 13y ago
        While it's lacking the menu, there is at least opera://flags/#activation-order-tab-cycling now.
  - benologist 13y ago
    I agree the rendering engine isn't important, but when they threw out Presto they also threw out most of the features and innovations they created and turned Opera into a sort of half-assed Chrome.
    - Aldo_MX 13y ago
      Porting features usually mean to redesign them to match the new codebase/paradigm. It's not as simple as copy/pasting code...
      - Dylan16807 13y ago
        Nobody said it was simple. The problem is that they shouldn't have tossed out the old code if they weren't going to be able to replace it.
        Aldo_MX 13y ago
        So you are suggesting them to maintain two different codebases during the transition rather than focus all their efforts to the new version to make the transition as short as possible? IMHO they did the correct choice, every new version Opera will difference itself more and more of Chromium. You can continue to use Opera 12.16 until they take the decision to pull the trigger to completely kill 12.16 auto-updating it... Remember the transition from Firefox 3.6 to the current Firefox, they didn't kill 3.6 until they reached version 12.
        benologist 13y ago
        There was literally nothing to stop them delaying the release by 1 - 2 months and delivering more than a bare-bones Chrome. Opera sets their own schedule beholden to nobody.
  - _sabe_ 13y ago
    I used to use Opera because of it's privacy features. Being able to have different configuration of javascript, cookies, referals, content blocking and so on. Now with Opera 16 all these features are gone. How do you increase you're competitive abilities by removing everything that made you unique when you're already the underdog? :S
    - tripzilch 13y ago
      You forget to mention that they are "per site" preferences. But wtf they removed this too?? What is wrong with those people?
    - mcovey 13y ago
      Per-site preferences will be returning to Opera in a future version, so don't lose hope.
  - mih 13y ago
    The Myopera forums are rife with users complaining about missing features in the Opera 15+. Any unique features which distinguished Opera have been axed and most solutions seem to point towards using browser addons to accomplish what was previously in-built. They might have gained a few users, but it appears the majority of the current userbase will be sticking with Opera 12 for the time being.
    - morkbot 13y ago
      Yes, but from what I understand their plan is to bring back most of the features in the future (I remember them mentioning specifically bookmarks, opera link and tab thumbnails), until then: Opera 12. On the other side Chrome based Opera is also starting to look pretty good in it's own rights: it's fast and snappy, mouse gestures are there if I'm not mistaken, page stack (or whatever the name is) is cool. If I would to choose between Chrome and Opera 16 now I would go with the latter (also because Chrome really pushes too much Google on the user).
    - tripzilch 13y ago
      I heard that they ditched the fit-to-width feature (ctrl-F11), do you know if this is true? It's one of those features other browsers simply do not have (Opera has a couple more but this one's pretty unique) that I really do use several times a day, and I'm not "upgrading" until I know they won't take that away. Not that it matters too much, features or not, I'm thinking to switch to Firefox because these are times no longer to be using closed-source software.
      - gsnedders 13y ago
        Fit-to-width did all kinds of magic at a layout engine level — it's not that simple to just reimplement on top of a new engine. And then there's the question as to whether Google would let an implementation would ever get upstreamed to Blink.
        sp332 13y ago
        Why would Google not want such a cool feature?
  - mcovey 13y ago
    They didn't just switch to webkit, they killed the product and made a chromium fork, and called it "Opera."
- tagawa 13y ago
  An increasing proportion of Opera's (growing) revenue comes from advertising (they bought a few agencies recently) and their share price continues to climb. I don't think they have many problems moving forward, it's just less visible than their traditional consumer-facing domain. Still a shame they dropped Presto, though.
  - benologist 13y ago
    Is that separate from their browser stuff?
    - mrweasel 13y ago
      More or less I think, they bought AdMarvel.
      - frabcus 13y ago
        Interesting - perhaps it has the same market as Opera's browsers used to (e.g. carriers)? As a geek, I often forget that a shared market can indicate why a company is doing something new, as well as a shared product.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - muyuu 13y ago
    Doesn't make much sense to ditch webmail anyway. There are many ways in which webmail can help and promote their other products.
- manojlds 13y ago
  The recently released Coast for iPad is interesting - coastbyopera.com/ I am thinking Opera want to be acquired?
  - nly 13y ago
    > I am thinking Opera want to be acquired? Possibly. They were uncannily quick in adopting Blink. The series of events seemed to be Opera->WebKit, Google->Blink, Opera->Blink... so perhaps they want to get cosy with Google? Although, I can't see what G would want with them. I think it's also known that, sometime around IE7, Microsoft tried to acquire them. Microsoft have long since made their bed though... unless they want a better mobile browser. Either way, it'd make total sense for Opera to ditch their email operation if they were looking to be acquired by a business with an established email product already. Especially when many Fastmail customers are there because of their particular niche in service. Perhaps it's the new Blackberry group? Dark horse! :P
    - Indyan 13y ago
      Two clarifications: - Opera never switched to Webkit. Opera had switched to Chromium, which initially used Webkit. So, it's no surprise that Opera adopted Blink. - Opera has publicly commented it was aware of Google's plans for Blink, and that information was a factor in the decision to switch to the Chromium engine.
  - kijin 13y ago
    There were rumors last year that Facebook might acquire Opera. They didn't. But maybe someone else will. As a FastMail user I was very concerned with last year's rumors. Now I don't care because FastMail doesn't have anything to do with Opera anymore.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- thaumaturgy 13y ago
  I hope not. I've just switched (long-term, I hope) to Opera out of complete disgust with Google and a lingering disgust with Firefox. It's nice to have choices.
- vijucat 13y ago
  > and they've been netscaped out of mobile. Not sure what you mean. Just FYI : at least on Android phones, among FF, Chrome, Opera (and the default browser), Opera's text flow is the best by far. You can zoom in and read any article on any site, and it does just the right thing. There is honestly an element of fear when you use Firefox for the same thing: it's absolutely unpredictable what it will do when you zoom in. I can sympathize with the developers since the re-layout of a page, figuring out whether the user wants to zoom in on the text or the image, etc; may be quite difficult. Opera Mobile has seemingly perfected this over years and years.
  - iSnow 13y ago
    >There is honestly an element of fear when you use Firefox for the same thing I don't know what you mean. No Android browser matches mobile Safari for the slickness of zooming into pages, but FF mobile just works fine.
    - Dylan16807 13y ago
      Does your mobile firefox give different sizes to every comment on HN because it thinks longer sentences need bigger fonts? Mine does.
      - vijucat 13y ago
        Yes, this is just one example. To OP, if he has bothered to check this deep into replies, does Safari do text reflow upon zooming in? Should I attach screenshots to explain?
- sudomal 13y ago
  Developing an in-house browser engine is rather expensive. It's a moving target with constant pressure to better rivals. There's a need to patch an infinite number of websites, which don't care that you exist. I can understand why they switched and focused on value added features.
  - tripzilch 13y ago
    > I can understand why they switched and focused on value added features. But they didn't. They just dropped the browser engine.
a3n 13y ago
> What 'long term vision' is Rob speaking of? To spend more time with their family?
nej 13y ago
I can't speak for Opera but if you take a look at their latest browser in iOS (only available for the iPad) it will give you some hope in the direction Opera is going. The browser, "Coast" as they call it is a pretty nifty, well crafted and thought out browser. My guess is they're trying going for a niche product and are focusing on what's important to them rather than try to get their feet wet in every market.
mverwijs 13y ago
I remember reading that one of the big money makers is Opera Mini. All the content viewed by that browser comes through proxies run by Opera. This means a HUGE amount of data that Opera can monetize on.
- antocv 13y ago
  Monetize that data like selling it to clients or selling their customers data about their data to them? Will opera run some analysis and sell that?

frenger 13y ago

Please please make this an excuse for a move away from hosting in the USA. A claim to respect privacy necessitates that.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
chrischen 13y ago
The stance you should take on privacy in the cloud is that the USA just did a bad job hiding the fact that you had none.
- frenger 13y ago
  Sick of this nihilist attitude. > the USA just did a bad job hiding the fact that you had none. Er, no - the USA are the main ones wholesale intercepting everyone's shit - I'm not a US citizen and I don't like it in principle. I did have a pretty good expectation of privacy until they started doing that, because no-one else has the resources to do a similar whole-take surveillance effort. Anyway, I signed up for Fastmail because I thought it was foreign to the USA (though later found out the servers are hosted in NYC - doh). But seriously, I'd love to see an end to the "oh well" attitude. The stance I do take is "you're spying on and profiling me? Fuck you I'm leaving". And that helps me sleep at night, for better or worse.
  - chrischen 13y ago
    It's not an "oh well" attitude. In fact, I'm advocating that if you actually want your data private and secure, you shouldn't be hosting on someone else's computer at all! You shouldn't be practicing security through good-will (good will assurances by a party that they aren't snooping). I send most of emails through gmail because I don't care if the NSA reads them. For my cross-border drug deals, I use carrier pigeons with encrypted handwritten messages.
    - frenger 13y ago

throwawayyyz 13y ago

I love Fastmail and have been a paid user for many years now, but I hate the new AJAXy interface, in particular the infinite scroll as currently implemented. Slow, annoying, and makes it difficult to reach old emails.

tagawa 13y ago
You can select the classic interface on the login page. I agree, it feels more usable than the fancy version.
cdvonstinkpot 13y ago
Yeah, the new interface is missing a few essential things the classic interface has, so I keep the box checked too. Hope it doesn't get phased out- would be mad without the classic interface.
whichdan 13y ago
Fastmail has one of the few interfaces that gets infinite scrolling /right/. The outer mailbox div has overflow-y: auto; and the inner div is the combined height of every message in that folder -- my inbox has 11381 messages, and the height is 364192px. When the scrollbar is moved, JS automatically determines which messages to load. Messages themselves are tiny AJAX requests that take less than 100ms each. This is from the perspective of using Chrome on high end hardware, but I couldn't ask for a better web interface. That said, they aren't joking about needing a new mobile interface: the current one is usable, but definitely lacks the same polish as the desktop version.
- lessnonymous 13y ago
  That infinite scrolling is AWESOME. I absolutely HATE everyone else's version that makes dragging the scrollbar useless as it jumps around.
  - masnick 13y ago
    I agree. The infinite scroll is really well-implemented in FastMail. It's much better than the pagination in Gmail, which makes it extremely difficult to jump, say, 2/3 of the way down in a search or label with thousands of hits.

jimmcslim 13y ago

Have been a paying customer of Fastmail.fm since early 2003. It just works and I hope it continues to for many years to come!

coffeecheque 13y ago

I'm a big fan of Fastmail, and I'm tentatively excited about this announcement. Missing CardDAV/CalDav sync ability is sorely missing, so it's good to see the developers talking about it. I'd also like to see (and would pay for) options where the data is located in other countries, away from the United States. It's really symbolic, but also practical: I'd like my data closer to where I live.

josteink 13y ago
Seconding this. Currently I'm fine having that live in owncloud, but should fastmail start supporting it, I may want to sync these data-sets. Not sure I want to move everything into one place and one place only though. If it was one thing my migration from Google Apps taught me, it was that having too much stuff auto-integrated in one place makes it much harder to have control of your own data. It severely limits your options to mix and mash best of breed services as you see fit.
- da_n 13y ago
  How do you find Owncloud, is it reliable enough? I have heard it has a lot of bugs, can be very slow and in rare instances deletes data at random which would be unacceptable to me. I am using Baikal for CardDav and CalDav which has been very reliable so far, and BitTorrent Sync for Dropbox replacement which is less reliable and has some bad bugs (one of which is it being closed source).
  - josteink 13y ago
    How do you find Owncloud, is it reliable enough? I have heard it has a lot of bugs, can be very slow and in rare instances deletes data Good question. I have mixed impressions of owncloud so far depending on what area of the product you are using. The good parts: Contact and calendering managament. Just works. Integrates nicely with Android, Thunderbird, etc. Not very good synching back to Google though. I don't really care about that, but now you know. The not so good parts: I tried running it on my NAS, because that would be the storage-backend for the file-sync service anyway. I quickly discovered that the code is not near efficient enough to be deployed on underpowered devices like this. It needs optimization, or to be put on proper hardware. I chose the latter and redeployed. On my NAS, with enough data getting synched across clients could take days. So don't even think about putting this on a Raspberry Pi or something silly like that. The worse: Using owncloud's files-module as a drop-in Dropbox replacement, you will be surprised by how well supported all kinds of platforms are. If you treat it as a Dropbox replacement though, you will encounter issues. I tried putting my code/project/build-folders under owncloud and hack away, much like I've done with Dropbox. Even with a limited amount of clients, you will quickly encounter at least some bugs. The most annoying thing I encountered was probably getting conflicts when only one of the clients had updated the file. The client updated the file, called back to owncloud with the changes, and then got a response back that this update cannot be done cleanly. It then proceeded to the code/build/project files involved in the conflict and rename the local and the "server"-version to $file.conflict345678543 & $file.conflict1234567 or something to that effect. Needless to say that broke my code, my build and needed to be cleaned up. If you think that sounds annoying, imagine it happening several times during a 30 minute coding session. So yeah. The owncloud file-service currently suffers and cannot be treated as a drop-in replacement for Dropbox. Hopefully it will get there, but outside coding, I haven't experienced anything like that and it seems to chug along just fine. With a high CPU-usage though. So yeah. There are good, not so good and directly bad things about it. If it fits your use-case is up to you.

D9u 13y ago

I've been a Fastmail user for years, ever since I realized that their web UI was compatible with my Windows Mobile Phone. (pre iPhone era) Here we are now, and the rest of the net has caught up to mobile access, mostly. Though my initial reasons for using Fastmail have become moot points, I'll continue to use my Fastmail accounts with fond memories and hope for improved resistance to governments' exceeding their mandates.

beagle3 13y ago

If anyone at Opera is reading this: Please open source Carakan and Presto - don't let them rot, and us hackers have what to learn with them (and potentially do with them). GPL is fine, and may let you still monetize it. (And ... it's not like it's giving you any advantage - you've switched away from both)

telephonetemp 13y ago
Opera Mini still uses Presto. It is quite popular still, especially where people can't get 3G or better coverage.
- rplnt 13y ago
  And I don't know anyone (from the few people I know that use Opera) who switched to the new Opera (since it sucks).
- beagle3 13y ago
  Is Carakan being used in anything other than older Desktop Operas?
hotwatermusic 13y ago
From this presentation (http://vimeo.com/73934576 http://vimeo.com/73934576): Presto don't go open source in the foreseeable future, cause Opera don't want to lose support contracts for the TV browsers. That's makes sense.
- andybak 13y ago
  Would it not be possible to add some terms to the licence to protect that revenue stream in some way?
  - networked 13y ago
    Restricting commercial use would disqualify it from being "open source" according to the OSI's definition [1]. If you changed the text of the GNU GPL, the license proposed by the GGP, you would also no longer be able to call it the GPL since the text of the license itself is copyrighted and not free to edit (to, e.g., prevent fragmentation) [2]. If you did all that the source release could well be a net negative for whatever goodwill the FOSS community has for your company. What they could do instead is dual-license it under a strong copyleft license like the AGPL 3.0 and a proprietary license betting on companies being reluctant to share their source code. Still, it would hardly be to their advantage at all. [1] http://opensource.org/osd-annotated http://opensource.org/osd-annotated [2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL. Edit: clarified how the GPL can be changed.

breakupapp 13y ago

I use Opera just to maintain separate cookies haha.

Osiris 13y ago
I use it at work because it ignores the system policy against downloading exe files. I hate trying to download an installer and having Chrome tell me (after the fact) that the system blocked the file. Opera doesn't care and saves the file just fine.
nikcub 13y ago
You can do that with Chrome, Firefox and Safari as well - check out my project tmpbrowser, which is a simple app that creates temporary throwaway browser sessions: https://github.com/nikcub/tmpbrowser https://github.com/nikcub/tmpbrowser
billpg 13y ago
How to configure Firefox with multiple profiles... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5oubQ4kggs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5oubQ4kggs (I made this!)

dingaling 13y ago

During the Opera tenure, FastMail moved to new, larger premises in Melbourne and took on quite a few new staff. They did a lot of work on the My Opera Mail web client, which will hopefully be folded back into the main FM product. They also built-out data centre capacity, including facilities in Iceland. So all around I think FM benefited greatly from the three years under Opera, though I'm not convinced the reverse is true.

lubos 13y ago

the most annoying thing about fastmail is their high cost for storage. their new web-based client is top-notch performance-wise. a lot better than gmail.

antihero 13y ago

I'm looking forward to better mobile support. Currently I can't sync contacts at all because the only Android LDAP contacts app seems not to be purchasable.

josteink 13y ago
I went with contact-management (and calendar-management) via owncloud. There's two apps in the Play store, one for CardDAV[1] and one for CalDAV[2]. That setup works for me. [1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.carddav.Sync https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.cardd... [2]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.caldav.lib https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.calda...
- antihero 13y ago
  I just wish OwnCloud wasn't a slow PHP script. Can FastMail sync with any cardDAV server? Because I might just write on of those or something.

autonomy77 13y ago

Not impressed with Fastmail - I tried their free offer, wasn't impressed, and didn't sign up for the paid service. I've since had over 100 (yup) emails telling me of my "OVERDUE PAYMENT" (the caps are theirs), and they ignore correspondence requesting that they stop. Marketing via harrassment - interesting tactic, and incredibly bad form, IMHO.

dombili 13y ago
> I've since had over 100 (yup) emails telling me of my "OVERDUE PAYMENT" (the caps are theirs), Oh god, yes. This was annoying as hell. I actually liked their service but at the end of the month I didn't think I was using email enough to justify paying 40 bucks a year, so I decided to keep using the one I got for free when I got a domain. But even if I was going to buy, I wouldn't have just because of this harrassment. Here's a screenshot from my inbox: http://i.imgur.com/meNhlAr.png http://i.imgur.com/meNhlAr.png (there are some more that couldn't fit into the screenshot)
- Osmium 13y ago
  That's absolutely crazy. I'm a paying Fastmail customer, and that really puts me off. I'm "trialing" them for 6 months at the moment with a personal domain before I decide whether I want to permanently switch to them, and so far had been very impressed... but that makes me think twice. I hope they're paying attention to this!
- autonomy77 13y ago
  While it's a relief that I'm not alone in this, it raises a concern that this policy of bludegoning people to sign up via email DOES appear to be a company policy. Plus, they refuse to even acknowledge emails on the subject. I cannot recommend them less. Shabby treatment of potential customers.
nmjenkins 13y ago
(I work for FastMail) Many apologies about this. It was due to an unexpected interaction with our billing system when we added the free trial functionality. We never intended to spam or harass people who decided FastMail wasn't for them. We fixed this about a month ago and overhauled the wording in our notices as well to make them friendlier and easier to understand.

drill_sarge 13y ago

I wonder what "strategic changes" they did at Opera? So far they have shut down all their interesting projects (like Opera Unite), their browser has been highly customizable (the UI, not even needing addons) which was abandoned completely in Opera 15. Now they have some half-assed Chrome clone for Desktop, Coast browser which is also nowhere near final, Opera Mobile (not mini) is getting more and more generic like all other mobile browsers...

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

johnnymonster 13y ago

Is FastMail a joke? I get more storage for free at dropbox and sugarsync. What exactly is this service bringing to the table? It feels like a 1998 business model to me...

masnick 13y ago
A lot. http://www.maxmasnick.com/2013/07/19/fastmail/ http://www.maxmasnick.com/2013/07/19/fastmail/ HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6069944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6069944
subsection1h 13y ago
I don't require GBs of mail storage because my mail is automatically deleted before its 180 days old. Mail that's older than 180 days can be accessed by USG employees without a warrant. FastMail provides me with mail accounts for $10/year[2] that provide enough storage for 180 days and include required features like custom domain names, domain aliases, email aliases, etc. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/when-will-our-email-betray-us-email-privacy-primer-light-petraeus-saga https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/when-will-our-email-be... [2] https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/family.html https://www.fastmail.fm/signup/family.html