* Despite the fun marketers claim with Opera Unite, there are some more serious issue to figure out
The world of Web browsers is never quiet. Someone is always trying out The Next Great Browser Thing hoping to gain advantage and market share through some, theoretically, unique feature set. Over the last few months we’ve seen minor new features launched in both Firefox and Internet Explorer and Google’s Chrome has taken some big steps forward in stability.
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A runner-up in the browser race has been the Opera browser which, while its been around for over 12 years, has never managed to get a general (Windows, OS X, Linux) market share greater than 2.4%. (Note that Opera has been very successful in Russia where it commanded a market share of around 20%.)
That said, Opera has had greater success in the smartphone and PDA markets and Adobe adopted Opera’s layout engine in a number of the products in their Creative Suite product lines.
Opera, which is free, cross platform (interestingly it’s the only browser that is available for Nintendo game consoles) has always been an excellent browser. It is stable, fast and secure. In short, Opera is a solid contender but commands a limited market share.
Thus the scene was set for Opera to try to pull a rabbit out of its hat. The rabbit they produced recently is called Opera Unite and it is available as an alpha release.
Unite is a set of client-side, peer-to-peer sharing services with centralized naming and routing services hosted by Opera. To put that another way, the Opera browser now has a built-in Web server that relies on the good graces of Opera to function.
The big idea is that Unite users can share their content (Web pages, bookmarks, photos, contacts, local files – pretty much anything that the service can be engineered to access) directly with other users (which, given the centralized routing and naming, is not strictly true). On top of that promise, this is to be provided in a secure and user-friendly way.
Unite currently offers six services: File Sharing, Photo Sharing, The Fridge (“A fun place for people to leave notes on your computer.” Fun? What is the obsession marketers have with people having “fun”?), Media Player (“Access your complete home music library from wherever you are.”), and a chat room service called The Lounge.
A serious issue with Unite is that the security side of the equation has yet to be tested (I’m not sure that this service doesn’t open up significant security exposure for users).
Opera does make it possible for developers to extend the Unite service on the client-side and the documentation is quite good. But whether developers, amateur or professional, will get excited about developing services for such a small market remains to be seen.
Central to Opera’s pitch is the idea that users can and should control their own content and that this is something that users have been missing and need. Really?
But here’s the big question: Will users actually care? I doubt it. The distinction between sharing content from local resources or from hosted resources is something that the majority of users just don’t understand or, if they do, don’t care about.
Why would a user choose sharing photos of Aunt Milli from their hard drive through their limited bandwidth connection and only while their computer is running over using, say, Picasa and Google’s storage and delivery services for free? The answer, of course, is that they wouldn’t.
Despite Opera’s somewhat febrile marketing spiel Unite doesn’t give users anything they can’t get somewhere else at no cost and with less demand and dependence on the user’s local resources.
The terms of service for Unite are also a problem: “You agree not to use Opera Unite to upload, transfer or otherwise make available files, images, code, materials, or other information or content that is obscene, vulgar, hateful, threatening, or that violates any laws or third-party rights, hereunder but not limited to third-party intellectual property rights.” Freedom? Pah!
The ToS continues: “We do not claim ownership of any User Generated Content. However, by submitting User Generated Content to us, you grant us and our affiliates the right and limited license to use, copy, display, perform, distribute and adapt this User Generated Content for the purpose of carrying out the Services.” In other words, you are implicitly giving up control of your own content! The content that Opera is telling you that you should control!
I have always admired Opera’s technology and even if it doesn’t have a big slice of the general market it has significant traction in the specialized markets for mobile and niche platform browsers. So, will Unite get them a bigger share of the general market? I seriously doubt it and, in fact, the company could well be wasting valuable resources on what looks to be an ill-conceived marketing exercise.
