I don’t personally want a browser, which is such an important element of my personal and professional life, owned by a Chinese company. Additional, Opera isn’t fully open source. I also don’t trust Google.
I’m curious, what’s the rationale for this? Is it corporate espionage? Or do you live in China/have family there and engage in online activity that might cause problems?
> People should avoid giving more data to China out of sheer principle
Or self preservation.
Every intelligence agency collects blackmail. The obvious targets are those in high office. But sometimes you need disposable randos to e.g. collect intelligence or place assets. Being able to pass blackmail to an operative who can use it to convince e.g. a farmer to give them pictures of a silo or Air Force base (under the guise of commercial espionage for a domestic competitor or whatever) is valuable.
Agreed, and I know Opera is Chinese-owned, but Opera's web site still lists their headquarters as Norway. Doesn't this still make them a Norwegian company, with some safeguards against abuse? Not sure if any EU laws might also come into play.
I think foreign intelligence services are perfectly comfortable "navigating" laws. Obviously every company is vulnerable to this, but it sure is preferable not to have ownership concentrated in a country where all corporations are de facto extensions of the state itself.
You don't have to live in China for Chinese surveillance to be undesirable or even harmful. The Chinese government has made great strides, but they are still a corrupt governing body completely outside our control. I already don't want the US government to spy on me, and I actually have ways of being compensated for damages they do, let alone a government with diametrically opposed ideology and active campaigns to harm Western interests.
