Opera: Our New Browser Will Change the Web

By Jane McEntegart
published

Opera has long been a small player in the browser marketplace. Yesterday the company launched Opera Unite in an effort to cut itself a bigger slice of the browser pie.

Opera Unite is a somewhat mind boggling idea for a browser, which aims to eliminate the need for media sharing sites of Flickr or YouTube by turning your computer into both a client and a server, allowing it to interact with and serve content to other computers directly across the web, without the need for third-party servers.

The idea of sending your friend a link to a file on your computer instead of a URL is interesting. That said, Opera’s claim that this new project will “reinvent the web” has a lot of people in a tizzy about how useful the product really is because unfortunately, if you claim your product is the best thing since sliced bread, people will fight tooth and nail to find ways to point out that it’s completely the opposite.

Cutting out the middle man isn’t something a lot of people are interesting in doing, and as Chris Messina points out in his detailed write up on the service, millions of people are more than happy to leave the storage, back up and security of their photographs and videos to the Facebooks, MySpaces, Flickrs and YouTubes of the world instead of letting it sit stagnant on their hard drive on the off chance that the files might be of interest to someone at some stage in the future.

Will you guys be installing Opera Unite and encouraging your friends to turn their computer into a server? Check out the video Opera released about Opera Unite and let us know your thoughts.

Jane McEntegart
50 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dman3k
    I'm a little bit worried about getting arrested for sharing files.
    Reply
  • dman3k
    sarcasm
    Reply
  • rockabye
    I thought it was a bad idea until I saw the video. Me likey. :)
    Reply
  • tayb
    No. I won't. Can't stand Opera or that whiny douche of a CEO.
    Reply
  • cielmerlion
    Ironic that to see the video you have to go to Youtube, one of the nasty middle men they seek to replace.
    Reply
  • ohim
    cielmerlionIronic that to see the video you have to go to Youtube, one of the nasty middle men they seek to replace.and how do you suppose to advertise that without current actual means of showing media? don`t know if i said this right but i guess you get the ideea.
    Reply
  • Ambictus
    cielmerlionIronic that to see the video you have to go to Youtube, one of the nasty middle men they seek to replace.
    Yeah, but that's to get the word out. Otherwise only people that already have Opera Unite would be able to view the commercial.
    Reply
  • jerther
    The web just reinvented? everyone can already get a copy of Apache and build a web server. Same for a FTP. There are dozens of file sharing possibility already existing.

    If I understand correctly, Opera wants to make it easy for people to share files directly. Which is fine, but they'll have to do something about firewall/routers/nat configuration hell.

    I think they make their idea bigger than it is. I think they just want to make easier and more convenient a bunch of things that already exist, which is good!

    But it's nowhere near CHANGING THE WORLD!!!

    I hate when they say things like this.
    Reply
  • 3ddraft
    It's a good idea but the nice thing about the file sharing sites is that they're almost always up and running. How many people will know to leave their computers on all the time and make sure to have battery backups? The advantage of the sites is that the information is always available from anywhere in the world.
    Reply
  • 3ddraft
    also... can someone say security risk?
    Reply