Opera v Vivaldi

[Lestsrade]

I see that Opera is promoting the new version. Can you tell me from your understanding ... is Opera as bad as one sees in the press, i.e. Security concerns, Chinese ownership and why the chap left Opera to start Vivaldi? I do have a reasonable understanding, in respect of security and data harvesting.

Does having a base in Scandinavia make it OK!! ?

Have things changed in 2025 in relation to Opera practices?

Is Vivaldi as fast or as slow as Opera?

Not that I want to use Opera but I just want some clarity so I can get on and continue to enjoy Vivaldi.
Appreciate you thoughts......

[Catweazle]

@Lestsrade, tecnically Opera is in question features a good browser, but not in privacy, because it depends on extern investors and surveillance advertising like also Chrome. It is somewhat better in the EU, due to the privacy laws, but if you want an privacy oriented browser, Opera isn't an option,

Opera:

Vivaldi:

Checked with Webbkoll

Mobile (Android)

Opera:

Vivaldi

(Permissions are not a problem, because a browser need logically a lot to work, apart it can be defined in the phone settings.)

Checked with Exodus Privacy

[Lestsrade]

@Catweazle Thanks for your informative reply. My questions answered. "Long Live Vivaldi"

[Himmelssheriff57]

@Lestsrade I agree mostly with what @Catweazle said. He's given some evidence and explanation.
I also share his thoughts about Opera's features. I've been using it for more than three years now. In some regards their features are even better than Vivaldi's in my opinion.

To be fair: You can disable a whole lot of the tracking in the preferences in Opera, on desktop as well as on Android. The iOS version doesn't even have so much tracking on by default. This may be due to their location in Europe and their adherence to the GDPR. And you may find privacy friendly settings like secure DNS and "Don't allow third-party-cookies" much easier than in many other browsers.

In my opinion Opera has come a long way since the appearance of Opera 15. And what they include is meant to set them apart from competitors. And they must earn some money, as well. The new Opera Air, irrespective of their Mindfulness-branding, is one of the most beautiful browsers I have seen, so far. Otherwise you may doubt if there's worth in incorporating an AI chatbot into a browser. But I've been using it for translations and summarizing. And I think, it did surprisingly well.

If you follow their "Inside" account on Instagram, Opera appears to be a very lively, open and creative company. Their headquarters for development are in Poland and in Sweden and I guess most of them are good people there.

Still I think, it's as @Catweazle said and you also mentioned: The Chinese majaority owners and the other investors are the elephant in the room.

I've started to use Vivaldi again just recently. And for me the most important reason is its ethical stance. I don't know of any scandals or any shady behavior by its creators and by its team. On the contrary, the people from Vivaldi are very respected and generally have a good reputation.

In the end, I as a European, appreciate both as European companies with only one difference: Vivaldi isn't owned by Chinese capital. I think with Opera it's about 70% that's in the hands of Kunlun Tech.

[Catweazle]

@Himmelssheriff57, that is also for me an very important reason, the company ethics and the independence from big investors, A browser company, even with nice and friendly devs, depends more of what the investors say, than what the user want. That is the problem with Opera and aso others.

[Himmelssheriff57]

@Catweazle You're right. But they are also not the devil as they are sometimes been painted on YouTube videos and by privacy advocates. As I said, you can turn off a lot of things, already in the installation process on Windows and Android e.g.

The downside for not having investors is that you have to struggle to survive. Which may even be a problem for Opera Software, too, given that they even may have ten times the work force than Vivaldi.

They've started to post more about security issues lately. And their Q&A team has started to be much more active in their forums as of late, by the way.

But we're here at the Vivaldi forum, aren't we?

[wintercoast]

@Himmelssheriff57 said in Opera v Vivaldi:

Otherwise you may doubt if there's worth in incorporating an AI chatbot into a browser. But I've been using it for translations and summarizing. And I think, it did surprisingly well.

I have it as default on my phone and use the convenient Aria AI quite a bit, as I read and share a lot of articles and an on-the-fly summary of TLDR's can be useful for myself and some people I share with.

The other reason is its good reader view implementation.

It was default on my desktop before switching to Vivaldi. I still dip in from time time to time.

Someone else pointed out here that the Chinese connection is not nearly as scary as it seems.

But, anyway, just in terms of overall features I find it OK. Though, on desktop, it did introduce a few usability regressions that caused me to switch to Vivaldi, which was my alternate at the time. A major one was there switch to a horizontal instead of a vertical tab cycler. That's brain-dead as far as I'm concerned. In fact, I switched from Firefox to Opera mainly because Opera had a well-implemented vertical tab cycler at the time! Then they abandoned it!

[DerSchlingel]

Interesting article about Opera's acitivies in Africa, mainly in Nigeria:

https://businessday.ng/opinion/article/investigative-report-special-africans-beware-of-opera-opay-and-others-in-their-genre/

Make of it, what you will.