Ask HN: Why do so many people dislike the Opera browser?

[tavro]

i have noticed that Opera tends to get a surprisingly negative reaction in technical communities. but i have not yet seen a clear and technically grounded explanation that justifies the level of dislike. from what i can tell, common criticisms seems to be that the company was acquired by a Chinese consortium or a questions about privacy.

what are your strongest technically accurate arguments against using Opera in 2026?

[GaryBluto]

It used to be excellent but is now just Chrome à la Chinese consortium.

[tavro]

can you ellaborate on "Chrome à la Chinese consortium"?

[yareally]

I used to love Opera, until they dropped the Presto Engine for Chromium's and sold off the company. These days, Vivaldi is more like Opera than current Opera since the founder is the former co-founder of Opera.

[tavro]

why do you think they dropped the Presto Engine?

[PaulHoule]

It's a Chrome fork. If you want to use Chrome... just use Chrome.

[tavro]

opera includes several built-in native features that chrome does not offer by default, doesn't that make it a valid choice to use it instead of chrome?