Linked List: February 13, 2013

Wednesday, 13 February 2013

Opera press release:

To provide a leading browser on Android and iOS, this year Opera will make a gradual transition to the WebKit engine, as well as Chromium, for most of its upcoming versions of browsers for smartphones and computers.

“The WebKit engine is already very good, and we aim to take part in making it even better. It supports the standards we care about, and it has the performance we need,” says CTO of Opera Software, Håkon Wium Lie. “It makes more sense to have our experts working with the open source communities to further improve WebKit and Chromium, rather than developing our own rendering engine further. Opera will contribute to the WebKit and Chromium projects, and we have already submitted our first set of patches: to improve multi-column layout.”

Robert O’Callahan from Mozilla sees this as a “sad day for the web”, but I think it’s more like a sad day for Mozilla. The simple truth is that WebKit is a better engine than Opera’s own Presto, and this move should make Opera’s browsers — particularly the mobile ones — better.

HP to Adopt Android for Upcoming Mobile Devices ★

Taylor Wimberly, writing for ReadWrite:

Having failed to carve out a place for itself in the post-PC era, Hewlett-Packard is now taking drastic measures — by adopting Google’s Android operating system to run a series of upcoming mobile devices.

It’s a bit of a Hail Mary pass for HP, which has fallen years behind its rivals in the mobile space. It’s also a big win for Google, which adds another powerful partner to the Android ecosystem.

And a loss for Microsoft. This might add some context to Microsoft’s recent investment in Dell — HP seemingly doesn’t see a future in Windows or Windows Phone.

Google Play Sends App Buyers’ Personal Details to Developers ★

Liam Tung, writing for ZDNet:

Without asking permission, Google sends developers the personal details of everyone who buys their app from Google Play.

According to Australian developer Dan Nolan, Google sends him the name, suburb and email address of consumers that his app — enough to “track down and harass users who left negative reviews”.

I wonder which side of the “creepy line” this falls on.

Xbox and Indie Developers ★

Nat Brown, project leader of the original Xbox team at Microsoft:

My gripe is that, as usual, Microsoft has jumped its own shark and is out stomping through the weeds planning and talking about far-flung future strategies in interactive television and original programming partnerships with big dying media companies when their core product, their home town is on fire, their soldiers, their developers, are tired and deserting, and their supply-lines are broken.

His argument: Xbox needs an iOS-like indie developer system.