Opera 57 launches with news improvements and Netflix recommendations
Opera Software released Opera 57 to the Stable channel today. The new version of the browser comes with personalized news improvements and a new Netflix recommendations feature.
Opera users who run a stable version of the browser on their desktop computers may load opera://update to run a check for updates. The browser should pick up the new version automatically so that it can be downloaded and installed over the existing version.
Users who prefer to download an installer can do so on the Opera website. Check the advanced options to make sure that the "default browser" option is selected or not selected depending on your personal preferences.
Opera 57
If you are a fan of personalized news, Opera 57 adds something that you probably will be happy about. Opera improved the recommendation engine that powers news on the browser's New Tab page.
The New Tab page of the browser lists News below the search field, Speed Dial links and the bookmarks bar -- if displayed. Just scroll down a bit to find the news section.
News categories such as Technology, Food, Health or Motoring are available and can be switched between.
Individual news articles are displayed with a headline, source, and thumbnail image. A click opens the article on the linked website.
Like and dislike buttons are displayed when you hover over any article. Opera's artificial intelligence uses these to push news that users find interesting and less news that users dislike.
Integrated into the personalized news feed is Opera's new Netflix recommendation feature. The company does not say whether it made a deal with Netflix to display these recommendations in the release announcement.
Opera Software notes that recommendations are available in several countries already including Germany, United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, France, Japan, and Canada.
The recommendations appear to be based on the installed browser language and locale, and not on location. Opera 57 displayed English Netflix titles in the feed and not Netflix movies or shows available in Germany.
A quick test with a Spanish VPN connection confirmed that as English titles remained visible in the browser. It is possible that this is a caching issue, however. An option to select a Netflix region would be useful in this regard. A click on a recommendation opens the right language version on Netflix though if available.
Opera 57 features several under the hood changes; developers fixed several crashes in the browser, fixed a snapshot issue with Disqus content when taking page screenshots, and updated Chromium to 70.0.3538.102.
Interested users find the entire changelog here.
Now You: What is your opinion on personalized news recommendations in browsers or on sites?
Opera is not reliable technically and otherwise.
Not stable enough (ive lost my profile several times over time on linux).
It’s the first thing I disable. Contrary to many others, I still prefer Opera over Vivaldi, but this definitely is no reason and for people that really like personalized news in a new tab, I don’t think they can compete with the likes of Google
Switch to Vivaldi. Can’t believe anyone would still be using Opera. Not just junk like this but also who owns it now.
On macOS, Vivaldi has the most atrocious battery impact I’ve ever seen compared to all other browsers as well as a number of ridiculous UI bugs. Although I like the idea and the ethos behind V, the implementation is terrible.
No thanks, I like Opera. Thank you very much for your recommendation but if I ever switch from Opera, Vivaldi would be my last option.
Opera is becoming Bloatware.
“What is your opinion on personalized news recommendations in browsers or on sites?”
That’s two separate questions. Personally, I don’t want my browser to be recommending anything at all. I want it to be a browser, and not to be a content generator.
Personalization by news sites is fair play, although I don’t like that personally either — I can’t support this with evidence, but I just can’t shake the feeling that if the news is being “personalized” for me, it turns it into a news bubble and I’ll start missing news (and views) that I should know about even if they aren’t my usual sort of thing.
I don’t understand why you’d want Netflix recommendations as a part of the base browser (not that I want “curated” news either thanks). I’m guessing it’s down to money.
@crambie:
I think it’s a safe assumption that Netflix recommendations exist solely because Netflix is paying for them to exist. Unlike something generic like “news”, Netflix is a specific product and there is a really large group of people who aren’t Netflix subscribers, making this worthless to them.
“personalized news improvements and a new Netflix recommendations”
“What is your opinion on personalized news recommendations in browsers”
Ads and tracking in software are malware. Even wikipedia still defines them as such.
I loathe these ‘personalised’ recommendations. They’re usually full of things I wouldn’t dream of wasting eyeball-time on, as well as cluttering up my tidy browser pages. If I can’t turn them off, I ditch the browser: I don’t use Opera mini for that very reason.
I tried using it for a couple of weeks. Their customer support is non-existent. And they don’t care if the browser has year-long issues, like this:
https://forums.opera.com/topic/29615/opera-windows-7-bug-with-basic-theme-when-leaving-full-screen
Acquired by the Qihoo 360 (One of the biggest rogue software producers in China who works closely with the CCP government). I don’t slag it off because it’s even not worth wasting any half drop of my energy except this very time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Software#History