Google annoys Opera users who won't switch to Chrome


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zdnet

Last week Google supposedly offered an olive branch to EU antitrust authorities who are investigating the world's largest online advertising company for its anticompetitive practices.

They better cut phone lines between Norway and Brussels, because you can bet that the makers of Opera are on the phone to EU authorities over a recent move by Google.

If you use the Opera browser (proudly made in Norway) to create or edit a post on Google's Blogger service, here's what you see:

eb-google-snuffs-opera.jpg

This is new behavior, first noted by Bob Leggitt, who says it began occurring on June 27.

I downloaded the Opera browser and dusted off my old, rarely used Blogger account to confirm that this behavior is indeed occurring.

And you cannot make those nagging messages go away. Any visit to a page in the Blogger content-editing interface results in this nag screen, and although you can dismiss the message, it will keep coming back until you finally decide that the headache isn't worth it and click the "try Google Chrome" link that Google has helpfully provided for you.

This is how monopolies work. Google's competitive position in online advertising is so impenetrable that Microsoft was forced earlier this week to take a $6.2-billion write-off as an acknowledgment that its $6-billion acquisition of Aquantive in 2007 had failed to make a dent in AdWords, DoubleClick, and other Google-owned advertising networks.

Opera has negligible market share in desktop computing, tallying only 1.6% and 1.77% in the latest numbers from Net Market Share and StatCounter, respectively.

But it's a mark of pure arrogance from a company that isn't afraid to act like Microsoft (1998) when it needs to muscle out a competitor.

The Google roadblock for Opera is crude. If you change the User-Agent string for Opera so that it identifies itself as Google Chrome, the Blogger editing and management screens work perfectly.

Consider it a shot across the bow. If Google can muscle out Opera, its next target will probably be Firefox, which signed a lucrative search deal with Google last December that gave it a three-year lease on life but ceded absolute control of Mozilla's future to Google.

It's hard to imagine that this action won't raise some eyebrows among EU antitrust authorities.

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I don't see why it's really a big deal. There's quite a few websites that don't support Opera and that 'issue' can easily be worked around by changing the user agent for the problematic webpage(s). I guess Google's only supporting the more widely used web browsers which is kinda sad since Opera's a decent web browser.

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I don't see why it's really a big deal. There's quite a few websites that don't support Opera and that 'issue' can easily be worked around by changing the user agent for the problematic webpage(s). I guess Google's only supporting the more widely used web browsers which is kinda sad since Opera's a decent web browser.

I only posted this article because Google has been showing me a "get a better browser (chrome link)" message on Google.com whenever I used IE9/10. I don't get it anymore but I found it annoying.

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Google's sites haven't played well with Opera for a while. This isn't new.

Google instant search wasn't supported in Opera and if you masked the user agent, the page navigation buttons didn't work properly. Google Docs also had quirks - you couldn't hold down keys repeatedly while composing a document.

I guess their incentive to make things work in Opera is next to none considering how their own browser is doing.

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So much for standards then, as far as I know, Opera is one of the front-runners when it comes to standards support, even more than Chrome. So why is it that for some reason Opera can't use these Google services yet Chrome can? What sorta special tweaks do they need to do to support Opera anyways?

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Sites do this and people complain, but if it was Internet Explorer being given the chop, that's suddenly okay?

Hmm.

Because the majority of the time IE is blocked for actual technical reasons (Like IE not supporting a spec/supporting it badly/etc.), It's the same with the reverse situation (A site requiring ActiveX for example), the site simply won't work in other browsers in that case.

But in this case, it's most likely not a technical reason, Opera has very good standards support (On par with Firefox and Safari/Chrome). This reminds me of Google's "Chaos to Perfection" site, it specifically checks to see if the browser is Chrome, and if it isn't it claims the browser doesn't support WebGL and to try Chrome instead.

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Its a google service, they have a browser, they can support/advertise it as they see fit.

Also opera's tiny community is known for being the loudest when it comes to gripes.

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Standards compliance isn't the only issue. Sometimes things just don't render properly and it can be difficult and time consuming to address. For instance, I've been designing a website that is also a Metro app - it renders perfectly in IE10/Metro, Chrome and Opera yet is broken in Firefox. It's rather different from the past where it was usually IE causing the issues. My point is, Opera probably renders 99.9% of websites correctly 99.9% of the time - the trouble is that it can be a lot of work to support a browser given the complexity of modern websites and Opera simply doesn't have a lot of users.

I do think it's a questionable approach by Google but there's nothing inherently wrong with it, even considering their market position.

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So they don't test in Opera.. Google Testing their sites in Opera would more than double the Opera userbase.. They are just being honest, unlike other sites that don't work properly but never say a thing..

Beyond that.. It's a Google service.. I don't see why it needs to work in other browsers at all if Google doesn't want it too.

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It's a Google service.. I don't see why it needs to work in other browsers at all if Google doesn't want it too.

Remember when microsoft tried to make their own standards for IE? Remember the outcry? The anti-competitive lawsuits whenever Microsoft tries to bundle their own products with their own services?

Shouldn't Google be held to the same standard?

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They break things on purpose with Opera..Mask as Firefox, and boom, things work. It`s not just about not testing in Opera, it`s about purposely making things not work. I've been finding myself using Google services less and less...Browser sniffing should be dead. Follow the standards, and if you're not sure if a feature works in a browser, test for the support, not the browser! If a site like html5test can figure out if a browser supports something, I'm sure Google can too.

Can't stand Chrome...Only services of Google I like is email and search, ad I've been finding myself moving away from their search lately. I'm currently trying out duckduckgo and Bing..

And Google should be held to the same standards that Microsoft is.

/rant

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Remember when microsoft tried to make their own standards for IE? Remember the outcry? The anti-competitive lawsuits whenever Microsoft tries to bundle their own products with their own services?

Shouldn't Google be held to the same standard?

I do remember.. and I think it was stupid.

Windows is a MS Product, they should be allowed to do whatever they want with that product.. My TomTom doesn't give me options on what to install, browser to use.. nor does my iPhone, Touchpad, or anything else.. It's Theirs.. And they should be left alone..

As I always use to compare.. The Antitrust against MS is like going to Ford, asking for a F150, but with a GM Hemmie engine.. Sorry, not their problem. Don't don't need to provide it, and they don't need to do anything to make it even possible.

And hell, Google hasn't even stopped Chrome from using it, they just warn about it at the top..

But I still say, if Tomorrow Google made all their sites and products work only in Chrome, or on Android devices, or whatever, if would be up to them.. I would say it sucks.. and be annoyed, but not illegal.. It's THEIRS.. I don't see why anyone else has any other say..

This isn't contaminated Meat or something where the Gov't should have a say.. It's a product/server that you are not Forced to use.. It's all choice.. Googles choices would affect peoples choice to use their products or not, and the world would continue..

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MS used to do this on some of their sites. Like if you needed to be verified to download a product. Would only work under IE.

And I also know that when browsing some sites in FF, I get similar messages saying to use a different browser.

This is nothing new in what has been happening for years and not just limited to Google. But they should address the issues with their services and Chrome. They are pretty much not doing good by their customers who prefer using Opera.

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Aren't there a lot of sites like this? I have to use IE8 to access my work emails properly through Outlook Web Access. Chrome and Firefox display a simplified version of it. Surely its the same deal here - APIs and all that.

Why doesn't Opera support the site properly? Why is this Googles fault if all of the features work in other browsers?

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Aren't there a lot of sites like this? I have to use IE8 to access my work emails properly through Outlook Web Access. Chrome and Firefox display a simplified version of it. Surely its the same deal here - APIs and all that.

Why doesn't Opera support the site properly? Why is this Googles fault if all of the features work in other browsers?

And what exactly is Opera lacking? Seriously.
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Google's sites haven't played well with Opera for a while. This isn't new.

Google instant search wasn't supported in Opera and if you masked the user agent, the page navigation buttons didn't work properly. Google Docs also had quirks - you couldn't hold down keys repeatedly while composing a document.

I guess their incentive to make things work in Opera is next to none considering how their own browser is doing.

a lot of google services worked great in Opera until Google bought them, like their office apps. worked great, google bought them, then in the first update to the site, nothing at all was changed, except the site suddenly no longer worked in Opera, and it went beyond user agent they actually added code that searched deeper to find the browser for the single purpose of breaking the webapp in opera.

Google has been after Opera since the start.

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Opera breaks more websites for me than any other browser. Go figure.

It doesn't, but a lot of websites purposely send bad code to opera due to browser sniffing. Most of them can be "fixed" with changing the opera user agent.

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It doesn't, but a lot of websites purposely send bad code to opera due to browser sniffing. Most of them can be "fixed" with changing the opera user agent.

I think any time there's browser sniffing for a reason other than "Version X has a certain bug that impacts the site" (e.g. certain versions of Firefox parse XML slowly, etc.), there's something wrong going on. If Opera doesn't support a feature it should just not find that specific feature, spoofing the UA as Chrome (Or Firefox or IE or Safari) shouldn't change anything.

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Google not officially supporting Opera is just like program developers not producing a Linux version in that they both have tiny amounts of market share and it potentially would be a waste of resources to fully support the little players.

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To be fair, it is possible that there is a reason for not supporting Opera as it does have a lot of little oddities (despite its generally excellent standards support). Lost count of the number of times something has worked in every browser but Opera. Last one I recall is that it completely ignores the "onbeforeunload" Javascript event (IIRC because of misuse). It wouldn't surprise me if that is the feature behind this as it can be used for autosaving or warning of data loss (as Gmail does).

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Opera's a decent web browser.

That gave me a good laugh. While the rendering engine might be okay the app itself is the most horrific one I've ever used on either OS X, Windows or Linux. It's a bloated steaming pile of cross-platform crap and the Opera developers just refuse to come up with something that actually integrates with the OS it runs on. Most terrible interface experience of all popular browsers in my opinion.

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That gave me a good laugh. While the rendering engine might be okay the app itself is the most horrific one I've ever used on either OS X, Windows or Linux. It's a bloated steaming pile of cross-platform crap and the Opera developers just refuse to come up with something that actually integrates with the OS it runs on. Most terrible interface experience of all popular browsers in my opinion.

And I most whole heatedly disagree. It's one of the smallest browser downloads, has a very light UI, and is packed full of useful features if you need them - and if you don't they don't take up any RAM or get in your way. And certainly on Windows 8 the visual style fits in pretty nicely - not that any major browser actually has any form of really native UI on the platform anyway :p

On the subject of this thread though - is there actually anything broken in the site, or is Google just placing that message there for no real reason?

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