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back to article Opera buys mobe friendly VPN app bods SurfEasy

Norway-based Opera Software has set sail across the North Atlantic to acquire Toronto-based VPN-men SurfEasy, for an undisclosed sum. Opera is now producing a suite of applications through which you can "securely" read The Reg on desktop and mobile, and is set to expand its product line to include privacy-management services …

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  1. Thecowking

    I assume the quotes around securely

    Were to highlight your lack of https?

    Because it'd be nice to have https here.

    1 0 Reply
  2. Lee D Silver badge

    You used to have this, Opera. Before you sacked all of your developers and built yet-another-Chrome-clone with no distinguishing features.

    You used to have Opera Mini, and that used to have this technology, and it was tied into the desktop browser too so you could do image size reduction, etc. if people wanted to save bandwidth or use it as a VPN. And it was all integrated into the browser and worked perfectly for years, even on SSL sites.

    Now you've had to buy a company to do what you ALWAYS USED TO DO for several major versions of the browser on every platform.

    Roll on the Vivaldi browser - made by the former Opera devs and using the Chrome engine, but designed to have all those features that, apparently, Opera can't even keep running on their own any more.

    4 1 Reply
    1. Anomalous Cowturd
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      FAIL

      @LeeD

      True, so true.

      Still running Opera 12.16 here, and will be for the foreseeable future.

      :o(

      1 0 Reply
    2. Dan 55 Silver badge
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      Opera Mini's still available for download so I assume it still does work. So I'm not sure what this buyout's about.

      1 0 Reply
      1. Lee D Silver badge
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        Codebases.

        The "old" Opera codebase has been squeezed out. All the developers have gone on to other companies (e.g. Vivaldi browser). There's nobody left at Opera who can manage that code, so they basically started the rewrite that has been released as the new versions of Opera (anything past the 12 series).

        That's why the new Opera's are junk. That's why they can't put back in old features into the new Opera.

        That's why they can't manage the Opera Mini code that hasn't been updated since. That's why they have had to buy another company out, to buy the talent back in.

        0 0 Reply
    3. James Howat
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      Well, that's one possible interpretation. In fact, Opera are expanding that service - as well as the compression and tunnelling that they already do in the Mini, mobile and desktop browsers, that is still being maintained, they also have a separate app called Opera Max that can do the same compression on all data in your device. It seems likely that this is the reason they have bought in a specialist company - to expand the reach of that technology. I think they're aiming heavily at mobile operators, pre-loading the app configured for their networks.

      0 0 Reply

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