Opera is a web browser that many know for being fast and light. However, its popularity has been falling over the years, mainly because the giant Chrome has not stopped devouring market share since the first years of its existence. Considering that it is still a good browser, in addition to everything reliable, and that at some point he decided to start using Chromium to focus on the details that made it different.
From its installation process, we can notice some important characteristics.
Table of Contents
Built-in Ad Blocker
The famous ad blockers, which on the other hand make web browsing faster and more comfortable, but the other side is that they hurt both professional and non-professional content creators. By default, the blocker is deactivated, but we can activate it together with the option to block trackers in the Settings.
Despite knowing that we are affecting content creators, we continue to hate advertising, and we do not care, we can choose to use it, and my recommendation is that, as with Opera, use this integrated blocker that is at least more reliable than the hundreds of blockers that exist in the extension stores of web browsers, which do not convince in terms of security and often collect data. Why do I consider third-party ad blocker extensions to be unsafe? Simply because the data is unbelievably valuable, and what better way to steal it, than with an extension that was designed to analyze and alter the traffic of all the websites.
Free VPN
If privacy is something that keeps us awake, this is a good start, since I used Opera's VPN for Android a few years ago and most of the time it worked fine despite being free, so coming from Opera I recommend it even if it offered payment plans. Unfortunately, it does not offer payment plans, which makes me think that the user becomes a product, but outside, it has become logical to think that sometimes we will have a slow service because it is free and is a feature that is quite in demand today. On this page, mention that it is simply free and unlimited. By default, it is deactivated. You can see if it is active in the navigation bar with a blue icon with the word VPN.
Extensions and customization
Being based on Chromium, it is compatible with the same extensions as Google Chrome. Therefore, there is no excuse not to give it a try, and not to let another of the greats in the world of web browsers die.
Built-in messengers
This one of the built-in messenger services is something that some extinct web browsers have already implemented in the past. One that has not yet become extinct, but is no longer mentioned, is Maxthon. However, the fact that Opera incorporates them means that at least we will have some more years with this feature, if it does not die suffocated by Chrome, as is happening to the legendary Firefox. Recovering the main topic, the messenger services, it is a sidebar with containers dedicated to Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and at first glance they work as if they were applications of an Android phone with notifications or messages indicators, extremely comfortable and useful from my point of view.
Conclusion
Finally, you must give one of the not-so-big fish a chance, since if you do not do it, the bigger fish can turn into sharks and this would affect the way the Internet works a bit, and I am not just talking about the big Google, but they are not the only giants out there. What if Google Chrome dominates the web browser market? I think it goes without saying that Google dominates targeted advertising on web pages, web searches and some time ago it launched its AMP project, which, in my point of view, is a setback for the functioning of the modern Internet and the result of being a very big business and with so much power over users.
