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.

[Skybird]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-576...-vivaldi-site/

The former CEO of Opera has quite some criticism for the path the former secret tip amongst browsers have been led onto by the company, saying the decision for abandon Presto in favour of Blink was a big mistake. He assumes that this is due to misled financial investment policy and a too fixiated focus on mobile advertising, which he thinks has costed Opera at least 40% of the audience numbers that it could have reached if things would have been managed and decided better.

Independent surveillance of market shares has Opera's share more than halfed after version 12 which was the last version with Presto. The versions that came after that, lacked vital features - namely bookmarks - and pissed former fans in great numbers, who moved away.

As I said on other occasions, my biggest anger with the new Opera is that they have ruined the trump card that once was one of the two or three biggest arguments for Opera: the inbuilt privacy protection. That I fear they have compromised beyond repair when opening themselves for Google's brainchild. As should be known by now, Googles wants anything but privacy protection - all its subscription offers are designed to prevent that.

I myself look for a replacement to my old Opera 12.16 now, I have just switched my Internet Security Suite from Avira to GData, a step which has left my old Opera 12.16 in a poor state, it seems Opera does not like GData too much, additionally to the problem of GData slowinng down internet page loading, which would be no concern for me if it is within reasonable limits, b ut in Opera sites do not even load in full occasionally, interrupting the process in the middle. I am hesitent with Chrome due to Google's hidden data krakening that needs to be tackled below the level of visible options and switches (some of them are known to be fakes only), and have had bad experiences with Firefox years ago, which leaves me with returning to IE only.

I will check Opera's latest version, though, before going back to Explorer.

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Straying off a bit: Why I left Avira after many years? It just is not good and reliable enough anymore, they have detoriated constantly over the past 3 years or so, featuring non-acceptable recognition rates against first-day exploits, and a huge number of false positives, together with certain customer-related and feature-related decisions of theirs which I took negative note of. GData is a double-engine, which until last year features the search engines of Avast and Bitdefender, since this 2014 version however features Bitdefender and GData's first self-created engine of which they say it teams up better with Bitdefender than Avast did. GData also cooperates since long with Kaspersky - the company is run by Kapsersky's wife since several years. All that and the tests sounded well enough to justify giving this suite a try.

Difficult to find a good suite, it seems. Almost all of them come with this or that technical problem, compatibility issues, and other hazards like slow-downs.

I run MBAM Pro alongside with it. GData recommends not to do so, but deactivating the guard in AM did not show my any differences in internet speed of system behavior - only that tests sites that GData let open no longer got blocked by AM. It now is on again.

Sandboxie also in use.

Hope this way the Force will be with me and my poor paranoid brain.