Opera Turbo. Is this a financially viable project?

By Jon S. von TetzchnerJon. Tuesday, April 28, 2009 1:52:35 PM

Recently Opera unveiled Opera Turbo. Its awesome for folks with slow internet connections. But how does Opera expect to get back the cost of servers required to keep this service running? Is this a financially viable project?

Thanks. I am glad you like Opera Turbo. I share your excitement with regards to what it enables.

We have managed to find ways to provide both Opera Desktop and Opera Mini for free. The goal is to provide Opera Turbo for free as well. We just need even more users of Opera...

Opera 10 is supposed to have at least on secret feature?Why is Opera so slow in fixing annoying issues?

Comments

Zotlan Tuesday, April 28, 2009 1:54:50 PM

But that still leaves out the how, how are you going to pay for it all? Just by our google searches? selling lemonade and cookies? A pact with the devil?

(yes, yes, i realise he's not going to have time to even read all the responses to the answers, let alone answer them. Can't hurt to try though)

HenryAOTEAROAnz Tuesday, April 28, 2009 1:55:21 PM

Awesome!

serious Wednesday, April 29, 2009 5:27:01 AM

They surely have a botnet to save server costs (1) wink No, seriously: It seems to work out for mini where all the trafic is preprocessed too, so Opera surely knows its ways to get the best out of it's money so they can provide us users with a good browsing experience.

(1) in fact they deployed Conficker and that's why noone can figure out what it does, because the mere thought that it pre-renders webpages is so absurd for those security folks wink

Ryan McCabermccabe916 Wednesday, April 29, 2009 7:19:17 PM

I assume that there is a larger return for the large number of users searching on Google, over the cost of running a server. If Opera contracts with enough companies, as planned, then the searches should work out for their plans. I also think Opera's server costs must be fairly low by now...they seem to be fairly advanced in their abilities with them.

Ice ArdorIceArdor Thursday, April 30, 2009 3:16:38 AM

Right now Opera can afford the cost because it's helping them improve their mini technology on the desktop. In the future, I'm not sure how cost effective Turbo will be. I don't really think Jon's answer was as specific as I would have liked. Does he mean that because Mini has been sustainable, Turbo will also be sustainable?

tomassplatch Saturday, May 2, 2009 8:29:53 AM

I read in an article for Forbes, that Opera Turbo will be financed by ad revenues. I wonder how are they going to push ad to us through their servers...

http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/20/opera-software-mobile-technology-wireless-opera.html

tomassplatch Saturday, May 2, 2009 8:31:52 AM

Quote:

"Opera plans to use Turbo to sell another new initiative: mobile advertising.

Installing Turbo servers will give carriers more oversight of their users--valuable data for serving up targeted mobile ads. "Whoever owns the server will know what users are searching for," Assev says."

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