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[–] ximian 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Opera has an awesome mail client, why did it not go forward with it, or advertise and monetize it somehow ?

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[–] Gordam [S] 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

Again this would be a change in management. I cover that part in the link, but for the specifics of the email it didn't have any use in the new strategy, so it was fased out. Jon's new browser Vivaldi will include an email client just like old Opera did, but they're currently working on it.

[–] [deleted] 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

[Deleted]

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[–] Gordam [S] 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

:| fukn opera still has no proper treestyle tabs.

I feel your pain.

How are you feeling nowadays?

Much better. I don't have to feel guilty over not performing my work duties as I'm now going 100% disability instead of 80%. I have hobby projects going on, and the reason those work is because there's no time pressure to finish them. If I need two weeks because I suddenly feel ill, there's no dev that's getting in trouble because something he's relying on isn't getting finished in time. That's mainly why being in a large company pose a problem now. I can still do something, but I'm so unreliable because of my health that it basically has to be just me.

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[–] 1848177? 1 point 0 points (+1|-1) ago  (edited ago)

Why has Opera abandoned everything that made it unique, and settled for being Chromium?

Also, did Opera hire a lot of expats, and did they have trouble settling in Norway?

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[–] Gordam [S] 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Also, did Opera hire a lot of expats, and did they have trouble settling in Norway?

This was a while ago, but I have no indication it has changed. About 50% of the employees at the Oslo office was non-norwegian. Some had problems getting settled, but mostly it went fine because after the first initial bad experiences that happened, Anne Christiansen which was responsible for bettering the well being of the employees (Culture manager, I think her title was?), made sure that people knew which differences you would meet. For instance, if you came from India that you were prepared of just how cold it could get, and made lists of big and small things, such as making sure you had a warm jacket with you for when you landed at the airport (Gardermoen).

She's now working at Jon's new business Vivaldi, a browser to capture the spirit of the old Opera. They're located in the US now, in a large house (or mansion perhaps?), decorated much like a normal house.

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[–] Gordam [S] 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

I don't have any privileged information on this bit, so I'm both free to say what I know here, but also don't take this as gospel (add to that I haven't been there for quite some time)

This was a decision made by the new management after Jon S. von Tetzchner left (he didn't leave by his own choice, by the way. It was a decision made by the board). Lars Boilesen is the new CEO and while he's a nice guy, he has a very different perspective on the business plan than Tetzchner. Opera is getting much more involved with advertising for one. They're using the knowhow of the browser and surrounding technology to support that business, for instance the compression that happens on mobile devices when you use Turbo, use some parts of the engine to read the full webpage and strip away a lot of clutter (that would be wasted bandwith). Opera also sell services to carriers, and I'm pretty sure I can't say which, but I have written code to read and summarize logs for Turbos performance for a large US carrier.

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[–] 1848131? 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

opera is that bad, eh?

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[–] Gordam [S] 1 point 1 point (+2|-1) ago 

I hope my post didn't come out that way. It's still a great place to be as far as I'm aware. I haven't been in the office for about 18 months now, but you were given a lot of freedom to do your tasks. They bent over backwards for me and I wasn't the only one that got help from them in a difficult time. I remember one of our guys from Romania went home to his sick mother for a bit over a month and assumed he would have to take vacation time or leave without pay, but Opera paid him his full salary.

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[–] ximian ago 

"but Opera paid him his full salary"

Pretty cool opera did that. great companies, small or big care for their employees and dont lose them even if they are out of the company.

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[–] ximian 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

sorry, it did sound that way! but i always thought that Opera is awesome