Opera desktop Browser is reported dead !

[NJSS]

I must confess I had missed this....

Opera made quite the announcement a few moments ago [13th February 2013]– in a press release that doesn't betray the gravity of the situation, it revealed that the Opera desktop browser, not the most popular but loved by many, will cease to exist. Opera will make a gradual transition this year towards a desktop browser based on Chromium.

Basically, the Opera desktop browser is dead. It's unlikely that any new major version will see the light of day; there will be a few more bug-fixing releases in the coming months, but developers are most likely already working on rebranding Chromium.

Chromium is the open source version of Chrome. It is very similar to Chrome, though a few Google-specific features and the built-in Flash are missing.

Source:- http://news.softpedia.com/news/Opera...s-329082.shtml

- and -

http://business.opera.com/press/rele...-million-users

I wonder what medium & long term implications this will have for Opera & FastMail?

NJSS

[janusz]

Fastmail is not tied to any particular browser. Neither is any other email service I know of. So what's the issue?

[nighthawk700]

Originally Posted by janusz

Fastmail is not tied to any particular browser. Neither is any other email service I know of. So what's the issue?

I think the issue is that Opera owns Fastmail, so if this is a sign of business problems, it could affect Fastmail.

[kijinbear]

Originally Posted by NJSS

Basically, the Opera desktop browser is dead. It's unlikely that any new major version will see the light of day; there will be a few more bug-fixing releases in the coming months, but developers are most likely already working on rebranding Chromium.

The Softpedia article is blowing Opera's press release way out of proportion. Unless they have some inside information that other people have missed, it seems very unlikely that no new version of Opera will be released for desktop computers.

Switching to WebKit is one thing. Contributing to Chromium is another, but it's a natural extension of using WebKit for your core business. Rebranding Chromium as Opera, on the other hand, is yet another thing. Current versions of Opera have a lot of features that Chromium doesn't, for example, a fully capable email client right in the browser. It's not clear whether these features will be dropped altogether, added to Chromium, or maintained as Opera-only features that are not available in Chromium.

WebKit already has a very complicated history. It began as KHTML, the rendering engine of the Konqueror browser. Apple took KHTML, made changes, called it WebKit, and used it in Safari. Google took some parts of WebKit and used it in Chrome until recently. But that doesn't mean that Chrome was just a rebranded Safari which was just a rebranded Konqueror. Each browser has a lot of unique features even though they share a lot of code. Opera might do the same thing and add a lot of their own stuff to WebKit/Chromium, or they might not. Let's wait and see.

Also, switching rendering engines is not necessarily a sign of business problems. If Opera just wrapped up its browser business and made the Chromium team do all the work, that would be a sign of business problems. But as I said, it's not clear that that's what's happening.

[NJSS]

My concerns are:-

1. "It's not clear what's happening".

2. Is this if this a sign of business problems, which could affect Fastmail ?

3. As already stated I wonder what other medium & long term implications this will have for Opera & FastMail?

NJSS

[David]

Originally Posted by NJSS

My concerns are:-

1. "It's not clear what's happening".

2. Is this if this a sign of business problems, which could affect Fastmail ?

3. As already stated I wonder what other medium & long term implications this will have for Opera & FastMail?

NJSS

Fastmail was sold, sealed, and delivered, to Opera, a long long time ago NJSS. It's gone, gone, gone.(and has been for some time) - sad but true.

[hobbes]

The Opera/Chromium news is fairly insignificant news as far as market share is concerned.

What concerns me most of all as a FM user is that there is no mention whatsoever on opera.com nor on my.opera.com of an email service. - not even their own branded version of FM. Are Opera embarrassed about the service? Is the email service being culled, as is the browser rendering engine? That's my guess.

This, combined with the loss of the CEO who purchased FM, and the massive "write down" of the value of FM (which explicitly states the cost of selling FM) in the opera accounts - as well as the snail's pace of development of the new interface - makes me seriously concerned about the future of FM.

All the signs are that there is no room for FM in the Opera restructering.

I've always maintained that FM has great potential, and it still does. It's sad to see it languishing and lacking serious investment.

[Bamb0]

No which is why they should give it back to the ROB and his team so maybe they will bring back the classic interface!!!

[drew]

But the myopera.co mforum and email service is tied to
the existence of the operabrowser so would it not be
very likely they end new subscriptions to the myopera
mail service?

[hobbes]

Not at all. The email client in the browser is generic.

Besides, would opera really want to limit sign- ups to those diminishing opera browser users?

[kijinbear]

Originally Posted by drew

But the myopera.co mforum and email service is tied to
the existence of the operabrowser so would it not be
very likely they end new subscriptions to the myopera
mail service?

Their support forum is probably tied to the existence of the browser, because if the browser doesn't exist anymore, there is no need to support it. But other than that, myopera.com is just another email service that can be accessed with any browser, so I don't think it will disappear just because Opera decided to discontinue their rendering engine.

People should stop associating the fate of the desktop Opera browser with the fate of Opera Software the corporation, much less their email division. The desktop browser is not the only thing that they make. IIRC there are already more people who use the mobile Opera browser than there are people who use the desktop browser, and Opera Software has deals with several major mobile device manufacturers. If they want to downsize their desktop division, it could be because they want to make more money on the mobile side. And given how lucrative the mobile industry is nowadays, this change of focus might even help Opera become more profitable.

Another major benefit of using WebKit for your browser is that two other browsers (Chrome and Safari) already use WebKit and/or a derivative of WebKit (such as WebKit2 and Blink). This means Opera will need to spend much less effort trying to replicate other browsers' behavior, which is a major pain in the butt if you keep your own rendering engine. Standardization helps cut costs, which in turn means more profit. There is no need to jump to conclusions and worry about Opera's survival. They're doing their best to increase profit, which is exactly what corporations are supposed to do.

Even if Opera has no other plans for FM, it wouldn't hurt FM to be owned by a more profitable company. I will not be moving away from my FM account until I hear some sort of formal announcement like "FM will close down 6 months from now", and I fully expect Opera Software to warn me a few months in advance if they ever close down FM. That's the kind of peace of mind that you only get from large, multinational, evil corporations.

[qwertz123456]

That's BS. Opera is switching engines, that's all. Sure, a lot can change from this, but I don't think for the worse. Webkit is a very good engine and if Opera keeps the innovation coming as we all like (and remove the god damn bug from version 12.15 ) all is good

[anj]

Hobbes, my read is that Opera is not promoting the email because they are not seeking a lot of users. They just want to provide cloud services to their browser users.