Sharing's Caring In Opera Unite; Is That What We Want?
Opera on Tuesday released a version of its Opera software that, in effect, turns a user's computer into its own server, allowing users to enable access to the contents of that computer to anyone they want, anywhere they want, and "cut out the middle man," so to speak, unlike services like Facebook or Flickr that host shareable content for users.
"With Opera Unite, we are giving developers a chance to develop applications (known as Opera Unite services) that directly link people's personal computers together, so that you can connect with one or more of your friends at the same time," wrote Lawrence Eng, a product analyst for Opera software, on Opera's Labs Blog. "It all happens through the browser, so no additional software has to be downloaded, and it will work wherever Opera works."
So far, so good? Well, the Opera Unite model seems to salve one of the key criticisms of cloud-based services: users are in effect handing over personal -- and what might be called sensitive -- data to the likes of Google, or Amazon, or Facebook, or whoever owns the web services that promote uploading of documents or photos to be shared through that service.
Opera's goal, according to Eng's posting and interviews by several executives with Business Week, is to lessen the distance between users, cutting back on upload time, cutting out that "middle man," and, according to Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner, expanding the cloud by adding more connections across the Web that aren't necessarily through Google, Amazon or other cloud computing giants. There's a social networking component, too. Through Opera's The Fridge feature, users can write short messages and post them to the "fridge door. There's also The Lounge, which is an Opera chat room you can host on your own computer.
Opera will be undoubtedly worth watching as it works out bugs on Opera Unite and expands the Web browser-as-server capability. The problem so far is that it's simply not a name brand like Microsoft''s Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari, or even Google Chrome. Data for May 2009 from web browser research company Net Applications put combined versions of Internet Explorer at 66 percent market share of the Web browser market, followed by Firefox (22.5 percent), Safari (8.4 percent), Chrome (two percent), and, in fifth place, Opera, south of 1 percent.
The other problem? Opera's capability makes it a peer-to-peer file sharing service, with all the copyright violation implications that goes with that in the post-Napster era. And that's to say nothing of security concerns; users may be uncomfortable handing over personal data to Google or Amazon clouds, but are Opera Unite's permission levels really going to be enough to safeguard users? No one wants to give Google or Facebook or anyone else too much control -- but is giving it to users 100 percent, from security to managing traffic, really the way to go?