I disagree. Opera's desktop marketshare is making Opera untenable. Even though Google is a major corporation, I doubt they can afford to spend the time fixing issues in a browser that gets lower single digit uses. Its not economically viable. No one will argue that Opera is a better browser than IE8, but IE8's marketshare dictates it should be supported.
Google is no more forcing users to use chrome than they are forcing them to use firefox or IE
You're joking, I hope? Of course Google has the resources. It's one of the biggest companies in tech.
Not only does Google have the money to do it, but it really looks bad by not supporting Opera and telling people to use Chrome. Just to prevent that bad publicity it would be worth the money to just support Opera.
Furthermore, yes, Opera has low market share - a few percent globally. But it has very high market share in a few countries in Europe. Not supporting Opera is basically saying they don't support that country. Again, wouldn't it be worth the very small cost (in Google terms) to just support Opera?
Exactly. So not supporting Opera like this sends the message that Google wants Opera dead.
In fact, most things would just work in Opera as they do in the other browser if there weren't any Opera-specific sniffing code in place locking Opera out.
Really? How much do you think it costs to make Blogger work on Opera?
I would shoot at an average of 100k per feature. Plus more in the future to keep the support when they add new features.
They can 'drop support', okay, fine, it's their choice what browsers they target. I just hope they don't start sniffing for the user agent and actively blocking it.
No. No im not.
>Of course Google has the resources. It's one of the biggest companies in tech.
I didn't say they lacked the resources, I said it wouldn't be fiscally prudent. They are not purposively preventing opera from working, they are just not fixing bugs that only show up in Opera.
>But it has very high market share in a few countries in Europe. Not supporting Opera is basically saying they don't support that country.
I call bananas. That is like saying they should support IE 6 because its popular in Korea and China, and unlike IE in Korea, there is not something stopping most users in that country from using something other than Opera (including firefox, and IE). Besides, it doesn't matter if 100% of a country uses Opera if that 100% represents less than 1% of their marketshare.
You are asking me if it is worth it, and I think they are basically telling you no, no it isn't.
There is no conflict of interest. They are not severing opera completely. just off of one section of one part of one of their services - one that is probably one of the lesser used ones at that.
Not to mention, they are not going to make it not work in Opera, they are just not going to fix opera specific bugs. that means that if they stick to the standards like they normally do, then this really shouldn't be that big of a problem, outside of esthetics.
I think this is the sum total of bad publicity. Honestly, Opera's biggest issue has been a lack of advocacy.