Opera parodies Google's Chrome speed tests mercilessly (video)
By Vlad Savov 
posted May 28th 2010 7:51AM
posted May 28th 2010 7:51AM
[Thanks, Ian G.]
posted May 28th 2010 7:51AM
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AHAHAHAHAHA!!
@garfieldfriends Best thing about Opera is Opera Unite, I use it all the time to send mixtapes to friends without having to use rapidshit or mediafire. Worth the download alone, try it.
Bummer - I wanted to see them send a potato through the engine.
@Freakin Ijit I thought exactly the same... that'd be great.
I personally think the Chrome ads are a bit better thought, tho. It's easier to make fun of something, the tricky part is to come with something original on the first place.
@Boolean22 Exactly. The Google chrome ads are actually cool and proved the point. This was just kinda lame.
On the other hand, it did quite handsomely prove the point: "We're still trying to catch up with Google".
@garfieldfriends poor potato. Always being bullied by tech companies.
@Spaldinggreat I just started using it 4 days ago, and love it. Easy access to all my media and most of it I can play right in the browser without downloading. So easy too. It was working within a minute of the download.
@Boolean22 Guess we'll have to settle for this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2OS2pwrZTI&feature=related
@mikmik111 HAHA!
@garfieldfriends
Opera - "Chrome's got faster rendering but we have better sense of humor. We think!"
@garfieldfriends
I think internet explorer would lose
I really don't see what's so funny about these, honestly. Google's ads were never serious to begin with, so it's almost as if they're parodying a parody.
The funniest part of the Opera ad was the red herring connection.
(For the record, I don't like Chrome. At all.)
@anthonyt What don't you like about it? Just out of curiosity.
"Seriously, if you're not laughing at this, you either work for Google or you have a funny bone missing."
I would be laughing at that even if I was the CEO of google. c'mon, the company changed their page loads to show parsecs and jiffies.
@RincewindWiz I just don't think it's that funny of a concept, to be honest.
@garfieldfriends
"to see the epic video"
Come on Engadget, do your editors really need to pander to 13 year olds by writing like them? I hope the words "epic" "win" and "fail" all fade into obscurity before I start throwing thesauruses at semi-literate teenagers.
@The Madman Find me one place, other than playback of H.264 video, where Chrome beats Opera.
Opera is faster at loading pages, faster in JavaScript, and gives around x2 the score in the Peacekeeper browser benchmark. Opera even beat Google to release the first browser with WebM support.
If they were slower there wouldn't be any point in making fun of Chrome like in the above video ;-)
@garfieldfriends
GLARGEN BLARGEN OPEREN!! HA HAR DEE HAR HAR!!!
Vikings! yeah!
Chrome ftw
@Steafan
Internet explorer vs cooking potatoes. GO!
@o29
THIS
must be read by eveyrone.
(lest they fail at winning epicly)
@Alexicov
The fact that I misspelled 'everyone' makes this all the more ironic :(
@o29 Epic Win!
@garfieldfriends
ass crack sensored at 17 seconds lol.
@Boolean22
the Google Ad was deceptive, the "speed" test rendered from local files. Even Netscape 4 rendered local files near instant.
That's what Opera is lampooning, not the potato..
@garfieldfriends This was better than a mere laugh, I had been using chrome for all this time as I REALLY liked tabs on top, and Opera was much more cluttered in its interface, but this caused me to check out the latest iteration, and they added tabs on top and it is infinitely less cluttered. I have now switched browsers to Opera.
@Cy Starkman It wasn't deceptive, it was the point of the test. Google wasn't testing internet connection speeds, they were testing browser render speeds.
Way to totally miss the point of all of this!
@justjc One of the reasons Opera is super-fast because it has insane cache management, which often gets in the way and shows outdated pages unless you hit refresh. Whats the point in being twice as fast if you have to load the page twice anyway?
It doesn't let me tear out tabs from one window into a different window, though this is forgivable since I mainly use tabs in the title-bar anyway.
The widgets floating about as separate windows really pisses me off. What's the point? I've already got desktop widgets, so what reason is there for having extensions run outside and separate from the browser?
What's with the constant stream of alpha releases for Linux? Why are we stuck with the (hideous!) 10.10 version? Why isn't there a link on the main website for the alpha builds, instead of my having to Google it?
And don't bother telling me about the built-in mail client. Something as basic as marking read messages as read, it fails to do. I'll stick to my desktop mail client, thanks.
Web browsers being what they are, there isn't much to criticise, but I dislike just about all of Opera's defining features. And for goodness sake, if the desktop client is so fast why is the Wii client so goddamn slow?
@The Madman it DOES let you tear out tabs and drag them off to different windows.
there are 2 things here that collide though.
1: dragging down refreshes the tab instead of undocking it.
2: dragging up or to a different window undocks the tab, but when the tabs are in the titlebar there is no room to move it up.
so you either have to drag the tab all the way to your taskbar, or resize the opera window.
@thedicemaster Oh! My bad. Yeah, I've only ever dragged a tab down. >.
@anthonyt
lol really? I thought was a reference to the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) "brotherfranciz slaps anthonyt around a bit with a large trout"
@The Madman I suggest you try changing the cache settings then. I've put always check on documents so I never get the outdated versions. In fact I've disabled the HDD cache for good and only left the memory one.
@The Madman Try going to http://labs.opera.com 10.54 was released in May there.
genius
@KosherTelephone I'm really not a google fanboy (I own a Palm Pre), but I think that this "parody" could have been funnier.
I did think the fish fighting and the book he was reading was pretty funny, lol.
I don't use Google Chrome or Opera. I use Maxthon 3, which has proved it's quite speedy as well.
@KosherTelephone They do this sort of thing now and again and it's always beautiful. Folks who were fangirls and fanboys at least seven years ago, for example, will recall the infamous "Bork Edition" (http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2003/02/14/). :D
@KosherTelephone auto-del?
I honestly think Google's original tests are more interesting... but good try, Opera.
@revoltracers
I'll have to agree. Potato cannon + lightning machine > comedy.
@revoltracers same here....
@BigJayDogg3
I laughed more at "lightning machine" than I did at the ad :)
@revoltracers
I think it highlights my problem with the google ads, which is that lightening, potatoes, and all the crap google compares to chrome have nothing whatsoever to browsing the web. It's faster for me to walk to work than it is for someone to eat a sandwich. Who cares?
@thinmac i do wut type of sandwich
@thinmac *puts on obvious cap* Google is comparing the performance of their browser to things that the audience understands innately as being fast. *removes obvious cap*
Cheers. 8^)
eh...
Gota love the Google fanboiis. As annoying as the Fruity fans.
@magadget any fanboy is annoying...
@kelokera
. . . as are people who's only comment is how much they don't like fanboys.
[oh and yes, irony recognized]
@Bacchus027 So if I comment on how people that comment on commentators which comment they hate fanboys are we talking some serious world ending shit here?
Let it be irony boy, the world depends on our silence.
@Bacchus027 That just proves humans are annoying. Thank you!
Sent from my laptop
Amazing! I laugh my heart out!
What about now Ott is it ready now?