February 19, 2010

the seriously flawed opera proxy

Kontra takes Opera to task for the seriously flawed implementation of Opera Mini.

It’s one thing for an app on the iPhone to query the web, talk to its own or others’ servers, but something entirely different for Opera Mini to proxy the entire web through its own proprietary servers. Yes, you read it right. Opera gets in between you and every single URL out there, from your bank to your school to your doctor’s office. You never communicate with any site directly, only through Opera proxy servers that first go to that URL, get a page, recompile it into its own markup language, compress and send it back to the mobile client that alone can understand it.

Mobile proxies were useful 13 years ago when devices were razor-thin and data pipes were the size of coffee stirrers. Today? Not so much. Worth reading in full.