300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit

As someone who's been a longtime Opera user before switching to Chrome (buggy release around 10.x, weakening site compatibility) I'm so glad to read this. This decision shows the quality of engineers who work at Opera - not afraid to throw a huge chunk of code away if it doesn't serve the company anymore the way it was intended. Thinking about it I can't make up a single example of a large software house doing such a thing.<p>Looking forward to get my neat features again, such as fast forward, hotkey bindings, Opera turbo..

<i>The web may not be fully open, but it is far more open than the closed world of "apps".</i><p>(Of topic, perhaps...)<p>I hear this a lot, and I think, for the most part, web applications aren't remotely open (in general). While I can use any computer to connect to a web site, very few sites actually allow me to get my data out of them. In short, in my opinion, open access to data trumps open access by various clients.<p>On the one hand, we have systems that I can connect to with any OS I want but where my data is completely out of my control. On the other hand, we have walled gardens where the data sits, literally, in the palm of my hand. Both situations are ugly, but in the former, if I want my data, I have to pray the developers left me a method to do so. In the latter, it may not be trivial, but it is almost always possible[1].<p>I wish we had truly open systems across the board. Until we do, I vote we stop calling web systems open, because they are only open in terms of access, and that's not good enough.<p>1. For example, jailbreak, log in, and scp a SQLite db. Certainly not trivial but at least doable. In no way would I actually call this "open". I just think it is less closed than most web applications.

Terrible news.<p>This means basically giving up on standards-based compatibility.<p>Not bad news for Opera - maybe good news for the browser - but an ominous sign on what the web is becoming.

Interesting. Opera makes most of their revenue through licensing their rendering engine. That's how they've turned their ~2% marketshare into $180MM in revenue (compared to, say, Mozilla's ~26% and $300MM).<p>I wonder how this will affect that.<p>[EDIT: I mixed up currencies; fixed it.]

I'm not sure if this will change much for end users. I'm a long time Opera user and some sites will just lock you out unless you use Chrome or FF even if Opera likely has an implementation that is more standards compliant than both browsers.<p>Even sites like Udacity's course viewer did this (maybe they changed it, I haven't been there in a week).<p>So while Opera might be using the same rendering engine as Chrome, you'll still get locked out because web apps are setup to investigate user agents to determine who gets in.<p>I'm not sure if I like or dislike this change. I feel like testing sites between Opera, Chrome, FF and IE I had a better chance of eliminating all rendering bugs.<p>Opera I feel was/is the best candidate for ensuring your code was correct.

Yes, website compatibility is one of the major issues of Opera. The second thing is lack of support in terms of add-ons and such, but I don't see how they can help that. This might just get more people to use Opera as their desktop browser though. Every time I test a website on Opera, I'm like "I should really give this browser a chance". But every time that I try it for an evening, I notice the shortcomings in support (by websites, add-ons, etc.).<p>Back then I was used to having fifteen add-ons in Firefox, but after Mozilla made one bad choice after another, I moved to Chrome and live by Adblock Plus and some own userscripts and bookmarklets now. Perhaps Opera isn't as much of a culture shock anymore to use, especially with the Webkit engine.<p>I do wonder if they considered Mozilla's Gecko engine. It has a smaller userbase I think, but does that automatically mean it wouldn't be the right choice? They don't say a word about this.<p>All in all, I do applaud the change. It's a hard step to take after you've been working on your own engine for years, but they've done it, and it will probably add a lot in terms of website support.

We can hope that someday IE will make the move too.

I guess this makes sense if you look at it from a phone/tablet manufacturers perspective: A manufacturer wouldn't necessarily have the desire to implement their own browser on top of webkit so they want a company (rules out Mozilla) that will support a web browser on their phone without also being a competitor.<p>The problem I think is that the non-aligned phone manufacturers are going the way of the dodo. You have Nokia committing to WM8, Apple on iOS with Safari and most others committing to Android. In theory a manufacturer could go Android + Opera but why license Opera when you can get Chrome for free?<p>That being said: Opera has always done a great job fighting against massive odds. I hope this move gives them the breathing room they need to keep going.

More good discussion at this submission: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5211953" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5211953</a>

A wise move for Opera. Now they can hire webkit-engineers from anywere without heavy training on their model.

This is a good thing for everyone that uses Webkit browsers.

what exactly defines a "monthly user" for Opera and how is that measured? Is it based on usage statistics, or is it just number of installed/downloaded clients?

The number says 300 million, but my actual website stats, of over 1 million uniques per month, show it less than .75%

Hmm, any bets on how long before the folks at Mozilla make the move as well? It seems inevitable at this point.

What will be the first release with Webkit as the rendering engine?

I feel compelled to jump in and give a warning about Opera. I also know that the herd mind will probably pound my comment into oblivion, which is why I made a new account.<p>Opera is scammy, unreliable software. DO NOT DO MISSION CRITICAL WORK WITH THIS BROWSER. It will flake out on you in so many uncanny ways its not funny.<p>Also, Opera had the weird habit of becoming my default browser on my Win 7 machine repeatedly, despite me never doing so and only referencing it for testing purposes.<p>That, along with Opera having the top 3 spots on HN's front page further indicates to me that Opera is not for real. Like I mean, come on. How many of these submissions and upvotes are fake.<p>Opera, you're not on the up and up and you know it.<p>TL;DR: Don't trust Opera.