What have they done to Opera...?!?!

[Skybird]

Back to reinstallation business, I now was busy with opera. I had 12.16 until lately, but now on the new build, decided to give 16.xx a try, knowing that they have gone to the Blink engine use din Datenkraken's Chrome.

Terrible. From best to worst in one rush, what the hell where they thinking?

Not only have they injected Google's datenkraken-genes into their browser - needlessly compromising basic privacy protection, imo, at least raising fundamental doubts about one of the traditionally strongest arguments for Operas in past versions - they also havce messed up the design in a totally failed attempt to be "hip".

Multi-tabbing. Gone.

Bookmark-lists. Gone, replaced with an infantile anti-.ergonomic replacement that is a pain to handle if you have deeply-layered link folders (not to mention that it is a PITA to get your old links all into the new browser). Extensions trying to provide with functionally limited workarounds, are just working like this: limited. No joy.

I googlked and read in several forms, and found repeatedly references to news from the market and tech world that indicate that the market share of Opera has dropped from short of 2% to aorund 1% now. That may be nice for making it less attractive for hackers (on the other hand it shares Blink with several other browsers, making it far more attractive for hacker snow), but it also indicates that they have managed to piss almost half of their customers.

I deinstalled it and went back to version 12.16, which is the so far last verison of the old design.

Sinc eI repeatedly recommended Opera, let it be hereby known that my recommendation is specifially aiming at version 12, not 15, 16, or 17 Beta. 12 imo still is the best browser out there, good speed, great handling, and second-to-none safety and privacy protection, plus being every unattractive for hacker-developement.


P.S., on sidenote, I read this morning that Google wants to get rid of cookies that can be blocked, and wants to implement a mandatory new system that would allow them to identify all users on any hardware that they may use for accessing the web. It is a frontal assault on privacy protection, and allows Google to totally and completely profile users, no matter which device they use to surf the web. It aims at destroying any means left to people to block or avoid cookies, beacons, trackers, and expose them in full defenselessness to Google. Resists to use Google services. Boycott Google. Do not use Google+, Gmail and the like - all the stuff where you need to have a logged Google account. The freedom you give them now to proceed with their taking over of the web, will backfire against you and against us all. None of their offers is without alternative by some different competitor - support these.