Opera Kills Service That “Changed Everything”

By | April 24, 2012 | 32 Comments

Opera Kills Service That "Changed Everything"

Unhappy users all over the web, all 3 of them.

Good news, after a lackluster success with the overhyped Opera Unite service, it looks like Opera Software has finally come to fruition and will be discontinuing it along with the Widgets as well as Voice, saving both money and valuable resources.

Once Opera 12 Beta ships, Unite and Widgets will be disabled by default as company shifts its focus towards extensions.

Interestingly enough, about one year ago, just before leaving Opera, David Storey said the very same thing: scrap Opera Unite, drop Opera Widgets.

Can’t say we did not see that coming.


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Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • H576883

    Good, they can now fully focus on more popular features and will hopefully expand extensions API.

  • Hiram

    You left out the fact that Voice is also being deprecated.

    • http://www.favbrowser.com FavBrowser.com

      Fixed, thanks

  • Dfgfgfgg

    wheres that image come from?

    so im guessing is that on june 16,2012? opera will reinvent the web and as always and always will be?

  • Cousin333

    Wow, you were amazingly fast! Of course, you can write about bad Opera news…

  • guest808

    Can’t say I didn’t see this coming from the day that widgets were “born” into Opera. As well as Unite. I’ve been an Opera user/fan for over 10 years now, but over the past two I’ve been losing my respect for them only because they don’t do what the end users want. It’s all about what THEY want, which is obviously not helping their market share.

    I hope they grow up and start feeding the crowd what they want before Opera becomes a legacy browser.

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/max1cp?feature=mhum Maxim

    Are they moving Unite features to extensions, does any one know?

  • cyberstream_us

    I won’t miss these features much. Opera Unite was a good idea, but nothing much really ever happened with it. This also implies that something good is going to happen to the extensions API. I can’t wait to see what this is! :)

  • cyberstream_us

    I won’t miss these features much. Opera Unite was a good idea, but nothing much really ever happened with it. This also implies that something good is going to happen to the extensions API. I can’t wait to see what this is! :)

    • http://twitter.com/Astrophizz Dillon Kuehner

      Yeah I hope this means they’ll finally update the extensions API.

  • robotkoer

    Nice! Widgets were useless, there are much better widget platforms like Rainmeter.
    Unite was useless too, except one thing – http://unite.opera.com/application/401/ .

  • Pieter Nieuwoudt

    Never used it so big loss.
    As for the extensions, they are playing with extensions on mobile devices so maybe there will be one extension that will work on all platforms. 

    And its good that they try new stuff, if we don’t like it then at least they tried. They have tried many other stuff over the years thats built into all browsers these days probably thanks to Opera.

  • Nobody

    yupiyayey mother widget!

    told’ya it sux, it flops and even opera itself does not believe in the crap unite/widgets were

    good riddance, and now opera, just let us know what features people wanted, you have NOT have implemented due to resource being wasted to feed these shit features? [any remark about these being different teams just shows that 13yo kids should not comment without parent supervision]

    btw, any major page that WORKS in opera? facebook? no. gmail? no. twitter? no. ms services? no. even wordpress suck in opera.. who cares? name one major page that works in opera, please :)

    • http://www.youtube.com/user/max1cp?feature=mhum Maxim

      Name one that doesn’t.

      P.S. Is there a way to block comments from certain people your don’t want to read?

      • Nobody

         you live in denial if you think that facebook, twitter or gmail works in opera as in other browsers.. go to sitepatching blog and see what issues are with opera on these pages, and most of them are due to opera’ own decisions/bugs

        opera users for years lied to themselves that 90% functionality and some bugs there and there on a webpage is OK and that it means ‘works’. while other browser’ users enjoyed pages in their fullest. run some other browser, even IE9 will do and see the web as in 2012 not in 2005.

        how is your scrolling with opera? and position: fixed? does it work? probably youll say it is. contrary to what opera themselves said :)

        bullsh.. about w3c and coding standards. the same way you can make a car that would run only on smooooth as silk roads and on gas with absolutely no pollution. good luck with that, but hey, opera is trying for years to do that with spectacular result of being completely ignored by ALL major webpages

        • http://www.youtube.com/user/max1cp?feature=mhum Maxim

          Now that’s what I call a cool story bro.

          • Nobody

             better call your doctor if you cant tell delusion from facts.. sitepatching blog should be a daily lecture for you – inspect the @mentions:disqus  thread, some amazon threads and facebook thread. also position:fixed + scrolling plus some keyboard events

            if you call this a ‘cool story’ – cool for you, but denial cant be cured with pills alone

          • http://www.youtube.com/user/max1cp?feature=mhum Maxim

            Not good enough, try again.

  • IFartedThere

    They failed with Unite, so? At least they are innovative. See tabs, speed dial, sidebars. And well, Opera is fast with many built-in options. Firefox is slow like hell with many extensions (and I use it with just a few ones)
    Chrome is a great BSD project, but even Comodo Dragon is better than Google one. Safari… no comment.

    Opera should be perfect with 3d support (got in 12) and a sync for they feeds/email

    Btw, I use Skydrive and others Microsoft services with no problem in Opera. Same for Facebook.
    They didn’t care about sites who don’t follow w3c standards. 

    • Tiago Sá

       Firefox is lightning fast over here with over 70 extensions.

      And pretty light too.

      Most of the time :P

      • http://hector-macias.blogspot.com Hector Macias Ayala

        70 extensions? In Opera I use 3 and the rest are already built in as features.

  • http://twitter.com/cristianer304 Cristian

    I think this is a good idea.

  • http://hector-macias.blogspot.com Hector Macias Ayala

    As long as they keep the mail client I depend so very much!!

  • http://my.opera.com/d4rkn1ght d4rkn1ght

    These are horrible news. :( Unite is one of those features that made Opera special and different from the rest. I don’t want Opera to be like Firefox and rely only on extensions, or try to be featureless like Chrome. 

    Sad sad news… :(

    • Ichann

      The reason it failed is that the lords at opera DO NOT IMPROVE upon features

      • Gazztro

        Even if Unite wasn’t updated, it was still good as it was.
        It’s better to have something unperfect but functional than nothing at all.

  • Ichann

    The blind opera fans are the one that “Didn’t see it comming”

  • Eric

    The beta is live.

  • aUser

    i will miss voice. :(

  • parth

    bad decision, the Unite Service is awesome!

  • Gazztro

    Since Jon Techner has left, Opera team is plagued with sales manager.
    They’re going to kill Opera, turning it into a bad copy of Chrome/FF.
    Abandoning Unite after only 2 years is stupid !
    It was not the revolution expected, and so what ?
    I use Unite exactly like I use the mail client, the newsgroup client, the IRC client… I don’t need it every days but when I do I’m so glad that I everything up my sleeve. One click and it’s done !That’s how Opera should be ! The swiss knife of the web…

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