Opera browser: my final disavowal

While the Internet is being flooded by a record amount of Opera ads, affiliate program members and new hardcore defenders, while I - as someone, who has been using it without a break, for more than 10 years, have had enough and I’ve finally decided to uninstall it.

Part of the reason for this decision, was the new Opera One UI update, that I not only found incredibly ugly and uninspired, but also worsening the already abysmal performance of the browser, as well as adding to the already gigantic pile of bugs within.

All of this, came after a few very frustrating weeks, where the browser constantly crashed, under the weight of its own AI bloat. Every time any text was selected, it was trying to load some ridiculous AI integrations on top, but always crashing and loosing all the opened tabs.
After the UI update, the whole browser somehow felt even more wonky and laggy.

Even for those, who might be fans of the new UI and all the added “features”, that now include a built in generic anime girl game and stupid cartoon noises, upon clicking almost anything, in the “gaming version” of this browser, the growing concerns about this browsers spyware-like connections, to all kinds of mysterious servers, should at least be considered and looked into further. Not to mention the extra problems, that come with them being a Chinese-ran company, storing this data in China.
Quick summary: https://youtu.be/NV8akIgfDqQ

Int the interest of brevity, I won’t go further into the pointless social media arguments they engage in, their past promoting predatory loans, them inserting affiliate links (to the sites you visit through tiles), running a very questionable free VPN service, hidden extensions, that cannot be removed and god knows what else.

Either way Opera, you were an alright browser - many, many years ago. Sadly all I can say now, is “rest in piss, you won’t ever be missed!”.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org for sure, I also block ads wherever possible. What Opera does now (among other things), is sponsor creators/“influencers” to talk about it, pays to show up, on top of browser-related Google searches and occupies the tiny amount of ad space, that I do not block, to help cover some projects server costs.
But to be transparent, some of that is surely targeted at me, only because I was researching it - and the Google spyware somehow noticed.

Now I want to give Pulse browser a fair try. It’s still in alfa, but it’s one of the few forks of Firefox, that try to change and simplify things, offer a bit of a unique look and it comes with Ublock origin built-in.