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June 8, 2005
So Yes, Opera Told Porkies - That's Why You Don't Do A Big Thing Badly (or Stupidly)
At this point things have gotten a bit silly. I mean really, I had posted about this days ago - PCWorld: Opera Second String to Bushy Tailed Rodent, when everyone else on Opera Blogs was jumping up and down about Opera being there in the first place. Opera was one of 100 products on PC World's 100 World Class Products - of which FireVole was the product of the year.
So no, PC World does not think that Opera is a better browser than FireBadger, as my previous post makes clear; in a side by side comparison, they choose FireVole. That said, in their individual assessment of Opera, PC World like Opera just fine (though they just want to be good friends).
I'm not quite so outraged as Asa appears to be about it, but I do think that at the very least Opera was negligent in their understanding of what was going on. Though what is as much, if not more, likely is that Opera out and out was just telling porkies, and deliberately misleading in their very public statements. Someone needs a spanking.
In a way though, it really has been a product of Opera's otherwise successful marketing campaign - I think some people were starting to get a bit sick of hearing about Opera; ie within the technophile crowd, which really doesn't mean anyone other than them has even necessarily heard of Opera. And I think with people getting sick of being marketed at, they'd want to latch on to what has really been a rather spectacular gaff that Asa was right to latch on to. It's not overstating it to say that Opera Lied - because they did. And they did it in a bad way at a bad time.
What this intersection of events has led to, to an extent that surprised me, is the very real anger that Opera's mistake has engendered - though admittedly a lot of it has been from FireVole Fanboys. Have a look at Asa's comments, and Neowin's thread. In the Neowin thread, you can see that the screenshot taken back then is different from what it is now - apparently Opera has changed it, and done so without issuing an apology, and also without having amended their press release, much less corrected it.
Opera apologists seem to want to just say that Opera were just incredibly stupid and/or illiterate, rather than malicious, but if that's the case, Opera are compounding their own stupidity by not owning up, doing a complete mea culpa and moving on. When you make a mistake you admit it and move on, not hide and surreptitiously change things and hope no one notices. That's what screenshots are for.
I was thinking all this was annoyingly boring a minute ago, but I'm coming round more and more to the feeling that Opera needs to make this right. If only for making me agree with Asa Dotzler.
Edit: The discussion has also moved to the MyOpera Fora. I've also followed up with a comment on OperaWatch's post, about how the change of graphic, and the hiding of the press release, is not enough - and can very easily be seen as an admission of guilt and a desire to hide (or disassemble, as some might say).
Posted by subtitles at June 8, 2005 10:13 AM | Opera Boggling