Opera vs Chrome

[Jim S]

I use the same browser on my desktop and my androids. Although this is
probably not the unbiased newsgroup to ask, I suppose, what is Opera's
advantage over Chrome? Firefox lets me down on particular sites so forget
that. It need to sync across the android/windows 'barrier'.

[JJ]

Post by Jim S
I use the same browser on my desktop and my androids. Although this is
probably not the unbiased newsgroup to ask, I suppose, what is Opera's
advantage over Chrome? Firefox lets me down on particular sites so forget
that. It need to sync across the android/windows 'barrier'.

Which Opera are you referring? IMO...

For Opera WebKit/Blink (v15 and newer), it's Opera flavoured Chrome,
generally. It provides some conveniences which Chrome don't have. However,
it's also missing a few original Chrome's power-user functionalities where
average Joe won't notice.

For Opera Presto (v12.x and older), users control over what they receive
from the internet and how they use the browser.

In short, Chrome including all web browsers which are based on Chromium [*]
favors the websites, while Opera Presto favors the users.

[*] Chromium is the open source version of Chrome. Opera WebKit/Blink (v15
and newer) is based on Chromium. Chromium and Chrome probably have roughly
95% of identical code.

[Robert Carnegie]

Post by JJ

Post by Jim S
I use the same browser on my desktop and my androids. Although this is
probably not the unbiased newsgroup to ask, I suppose, what is Opera's
advantage over Chrome? Firefox lets me down on particular sites so forget
that. It need to sync across the android/windows 'barrier'.

Which Opera are you referring? IMO...
For Opera WebKit/Blink (v15 and newer), it's Opera flavoured Chrome,
generally. It provides some conveniences which Chrome don't have. However,
it's also missing a few original Chrome's power-user functionalities where
average Joe won't notice.
For Opera Presto (v12.x and older), users control over what they receive
from the internet and how they use the browser.
In short, Chrome including all web browsers which are based on Chromium [*]
favors the websites, while Opera Presto favors the users.
[*] Chromium is the open source version of Chrome. Opera WebKit/Blink (v15
and newer) is based on Chromium. Chromium and Chrome probably have roughly
95% of identical code.

All that is essentially correct, but besides
innovation in the tools offered to you, Opera
doesn't have Chrome's behaviours towards the
user, and collection and upload of personal
information.

Although now that it's owned from China -
who knows.

It's also inevitably very slightly out-of-date
with security flaws that are shared in its
program code with Chrome, so, you could be
attacked by an exploit that Chrome has just been
made resistant to.

[DuboisP]

Post by Robert Carnegie
All that is essentially correct, but besides
innovation in the tools offered to you, Opera
doesn't have Chrome's behaviours towards the
user, and collection and upload of personal
information.
Although now that it's owned from China -
who knows.

https://www.chromium.org/
opera://about/credits
http://www.opera.com/privacy

[JJ]

Post by Robert Carnegie
All that is essentially correct, but besides
innovation in the tools offered to you, Opera
doesn't have Chrome's behaviours towards the
user, and collection and upload of personal
information.

True, but not all of them were stripped from Opera Blink. My Wireshark log
shows questionable network requests to third party servers even though I've
disabled all plugins and extensions. One of the most alarming thing is its
adoption of QUIC protocol whose functionality can't be disabled.

Post by Robert Carnegie
Although now that it's owned from China -
who knows.

It's concerning, yes. Considering the history on what happened when
something from a first world country was acquired by a third world country.
But Opera Blink is open source, so there's nothing can be hidden.

Post by Robert Carnegie
It's also inevitably very slightly out-of-date
with security flaws that are shared in its
program code with Chrome, so, you could be
attacked by an exploit that Chrome has just been
made resistant to.

I think that's one of Opera Blink's disadvantage, unfortunately. In fact,
that's a disadvantage of all Chromium based web browsers have. Keep in mind
that they're not Chrome or Chromium, so it's expected that they will always
be one step behind.

The process of updating the foundation of a software, especially if the
foundation came from another party, is very tedious. The more modifications
are made to the original foundation, the more tedious it would be when
upgrading the foundation.

Adding to the problem is that the rate of the foundation development itself
is increasing. Any company, organization, or individual developing their own
web browser which are based on Chromium won't be able to keep up the pace
unless they have abundant resources.

Moreover, Chromium source came from Chrome. So, Chromium can only follow
Chrome and is always one step behind Chrome. And even Chromium can barely
keep up with Chrome's pace of development. You can see that over the time,
Google specific features are gradually kept intact in Chromium builds.