I knew not to use Opera GX as soon as they started sponsoring youtubers. I swear, youtube sponsorships are like anti-ads. 9 times out of 10 they’re doing something sketchy.
I fondly remember the old opera days, up until the latest presto version, 12.18. If you knew what you were doing, you were able to fully customize the entire browser, all of it’s toolbars and context menus, it was incredible.
Once they switched over to the Blink engine, all of that was lost. It’s entire USP gone, just like that.
I’ve tried Opera 2 or 3 years back, just to see what it is like, and it’s just another pointless chromium based browser, offering nothing to keep me using it, and the more i see posts and ads from this company, the more I feel like I made the right choice.
I’ve also tried the “spiritual successor” to Opera 12, Vivaldi, but it too couldn’t win me back over from Firefox.
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.
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.
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.
God I miss old Opera
Opera died when they killed Presto and pretended they couldn’t make anything like that with blink.
Then the old ones made Vivaldi and proved that was a damned lie.
