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Comment by rch | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to hear the full story on how Opera self-destructed as a company. Someone should write a book or something.

Considering this is an announcement for a new software release, the comments were already negative enough. However, yours is just plain rude. Opera has not self-destructed as anything, and in fact they take the steps they think necessary but others would likely find intimidating (such as throwing out a rendering engine or releasing a standalone client, which they probably knew will be controversial).

Why do you think Opera self-destructed? They announced their quarterly financial results a couple of weeks ago, and they set another revenue and profit record. They're basically growing on all fronts, have plenty of cash in the bank, and are growing their profits.

So again, what self-destruction are you referring to?

They just announced that Opera 12 will be discontinued, with Opera 15 being a Chrome fork in which they will attempt to reimplement features from Opera 12. They also announced that several features which people liked a lot will never make it into Opera 15. And to put the cherry on the top: The very first feature that they announced removed were "Bookmarks".

In other words: They're very busy alienating massive parts of their user base.

You don't seem to understand what's going on.

Most Opera users are on mobile, not desktop. Opera is struggling on desktop. Sites weren't working, and that was the #1 problem with the browser. Fixing that will let them grow. Opera's got nothing to lose on the desktop. They can only gain users by doing this, even if a handful of hardcore users drop them.

Most people don't need most features in Opera 12, but they're just getting started with the new Opera. Now they can create a proper foundation instead of this:

http://www.favbrowser.com/opera-the-past-the-present-the-fut...

Opera 15 is not a fork of Chrome either. It's using Chrome (Chromium) as-is, but with a new user interface on top of it.

In other words: They may alienate a small hardcore group, but fixing site compatibility will more than make up for it because other people can finally start using it.

Check their financial reports, desktop is 25% of their income: http://business.opera.com/company/investors/finance/

> Opera 15 is not a fork of Chrome either.

Are you thenwhat? Just on the off-chance that you're not him: What you described is exactly what a fork is. Please don't try to comment on software development until you've actually gained the experience that job entails.

Desktop is a smaller and smaller part of their income. It could disappear tomorrow, and the company would still be in great shape. It's growing all over the place. So again, claiming that Opera self-destructed is silly.

Thenwhat? Huh? A fork is taking the code in a new direction and making it differ from the original. Using the code as-is, is not a fork.

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