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Title

Google hates the Opera browser

Description

Google has recently begun more aggressively trying to get people to stop using the Opera browser. There are not many of us (less than 2% of the worldwide market), but Opera isn't exactly so difficult to support. Google products do support the following browsers: <img src="{att_link}google_flight_not_supported.png" href="{att_link}google_flight_not_supported.png" align="center" class="frame" scale="75%"> <bq>Google Flight Search has not been optimized for your browser. For best results, please try Chrome, Firefox 3.5+, Internet Explorer 8+, Safari 4+.</bq> So, browsers that are around 3 years old---Firefox 3.5 and Internet Explorer 8---are considered more modern---I was exhorted to <iq>upgrade [my] browser</iq> by the Google+ page---than my cutting-edge Opera 12 late alpha/early beta version. Surely, if a site runs on one of those browsers, poor little red-headed stepchild Opera can run it too? <img attachment="google_plus_not_supported.png" align="left" class="frame">It's hard to know what the problem actually is, though. Opera is quite a modern browser, supporting myriad modern standards and really requiring little to no additional work. At worst, a cutting-edge transformation or gradient might not work, but support for that kind of effect shouldn't make or break a user's experience anyway. The browser market has gotten much easier to support (as evidenced by the long list of browsers that Google <i>does</i> support) because their basic functionality has gotten so standardized. If a site works on a WebKit-based browser (Chrome and Safari) and any Gecko-based browser (Firefox) and even Internet Explorer, then there's a very good chance that it will just work on Opera as well. <img attachment="earthli_browser_detector.png" align="right" class="frame">Or maybe it's the switch to a 64-bit executable that's throwing off the browser-detection algorithms of the mighty Google? That would be a bit sad: earthli's <a href="http://earthli.com/shared/browser.php">browser detector</a> doesn't seem to have a problem with it---and it hasn't been updated for years. It's strange that Google hasn't switched to a capability-based browser-detection mechanism, blocking browsers that can't prove that they support certain features rather than just blocking by make and model. Google Flight's approach is also a good deal more friendly than that of Google+: at least I could use the site (which worked flawlessly, by the way). The little banner let me know that, should I have run into trouble, it might be due to the browser's not having been tested and supported by the site. Fair warning. Just blocking me, as Google+ does, is a bit strict. I told Opera to spoof as Firefox for that site and saw the same old site I'd seen the day before<fn> but soon left because I felt like a trespasser, unwanted. As for the wonderful suggestion to just "upgrade my browser": you can stick it. Do I enjoy your site so much that I will switch away from my browser? I do not. Do I enjoy it enough to start another browser just to check your site? I do not. Does Google care about my visit? It does not. There are millions of other visitors---or in the case of Google+, at least hundreds---who use supported browsers with which it can concern itself. We seem to have arrived at an impasse: I use a not uncommon and very modern browser with a plethora of features on which I have come to rely and have not yet been compelled to change...and Google still has some hard-coded <c>if (browserIsOpera) return;</c> statements that it doesn't want to remove.<fn> <hr> <ft>With the same content as well; is anyone even using Google+ anymore?</ft> <ft>Google isn't alone in that regard: the latest version of the Zimbra web mail client <i>still</i> doesn't support "advanced" mode for Opera out-of-the-box. Opera has to include a user-script that fixes a few <c>if (!browserIsOpera) {...}</c> statements that are still in that software.</ft>