this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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[–] DontTreadOnBigfoot@lemmy.world 288 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Holy shit.

I thought this was just going to be a matter of poor security implementation or crappy feature sets.

Turns out they converted the company into a loan shark operation owned by Chinese ad companies

when the Opera browser continued losing users (due to competition from Google and Apple), the company shifted gears to building mobile apps that provided predatory short-term loans. The interest rates on those loans ranged from 365-876% per year, and loan terms from 7-29 days.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 142 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This behavior is just beyond batshit. Before anyone decides tl;dr, the article is well worth a read.

I had a hunch that Opera was circling the drain when I started seeing them sponsor Youtubers. A general rule of thumb is that no company that has anything worth a shit devolves to sponsoring Youtube videos. I had no idea about the predatory loans thing, or the crypto scam chasing thing, or the ripping off ChatGPT thing...

Back here in reality, there is no reason anyone should be using any other browser than Firefox. There is one organization left in this arena still devoted to protecting privacy, maintaining open standards, and a fair and open web for all. And it ain't Google, it ain't Microsoft, and it ain't Opera.

[–] fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And it’s always been Firefox since day one. Out of the ashes of Netscape Navigator rose Firefox and Mozilla have been one of the only bastions of the free and open web ever since. I honestly don’t understand why anyone would use another browser.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fear of change and effective marketing. Those are the only reasons.

[–] TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Actually it's an effective cloud-based password manager that doesn't rely on local storage or weird plugins or backups.

That's what keeps me using chrome. I could lose everything in a house fire, pick up any device, log in and have access to all my stuff without any further action on my part, right out of the box.

That's the only feature I care about, and chrome is the only browser I've seen that provides it.

Get me that in firefox, and I'll switch today.

[–] Deebster@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm confused since Firefox Sync has been letting you sync/backup your passwords, bookmarks and history for a decade or two at this point, and you can even self-host the sync server.

I don't know the complete FF password manager details (Bitwarden user here) but where does Firefox fall short for you?

[–] Maven@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What are you talking about? Firefox has had literally Sync since before Chrome existed.

Firefox Sync initial release: December 21, 2007

Google Chrome intial release: September 2, 2008 (Beta), (1.0) December 11, 2008

A full year, my guy.

[–] Zerlyna@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] takeda@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I was a huge fan but the moment they changed the engine it was just Chrome in different skin. And later the news that they were bought by a Chinese firm doing shady stuff just confirmed that it was the right decision.

I am sad that they did not open source the engine. Somebody leaked it, but no one serious would touch it for legal reasons.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

For me old Opera is an artifact of the bygone era, together with old Skype and Hamachi, when some proprietary software would really work well and even support Linux.

Opera actually even released FreeBSD versions, if I'm not mistaken.

Skype - we all know what.

Hamachi still works =)

[–] Deceptichum@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's been that way for years now.

[–] Skyhighatrist@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

Yeah the surprise in this thread is surprising to me. I've considered Opera to be untrustworthy for years now.