The main difference between Vivaldi and Opera is that Opera is a more commercial company and it is located on the stock market. Opera changed their ideas and route they were going. They now want to be a more 'mainstream' browser, in which I mean they want to get a larger userbase, which consist not only those called 'power users', but also many less IT knowledged people. In the Opera staff, there were disputes and the result is now that Jon Von Tetzchner left the company and started Vivaldi. About Opera, as a long time Opera user, I too have mixed feelings about the security, more general the privacy, of Opera. Not really in the current state, since the Chinese deal is still quite fresh. But in the future, I have doubts that it will stay the same. Opera has gathered a huge amount amount of new users with their fresh built-in VPN, but that VPN service is delivered by Surfeasy, a company Opera bought about one or two years ago. The thing is that Surfeasy wasn't included in the Chinese deal, so in the future, it might be the case they are going to run their own servers to be able to still have that VPN, as the browser and Opera mediaworks + Surfeasy etc. are now separate companies in fact. Next to their VPN they still have Opera Turbo which is a proxy that uses their own Opera servers and in that perspective it's a really nice article you mentioned there
@_CyberGhosT_. So if they are moving their servers to China too, the privacy concerns really might get to higher levels. With their growing userbase, they need to invest in other servers, in China too. And so it slowly starts.... And in the far future, let's say 5 years or so, I actually think the name Opera will slowly fade away into something Chinese. I can be wrong of course, but you know that in economical context, everything is possible. A few days after the deal finished, they already got rid of a big amount of developers and some big names in the Opera team left by own decision, so I don't see a really bright future for Opera, or at least not for the Opera as it once was back in the day.
On the other hand Vivaldi is just a startup and not profitable yet. All the money is coming from Jon and deals with websites and companies to get a bookmark of their site into the browser by default and revenue from search engines. He already made clear he doesn't want make the same mistake again, so they will remain a company on its own as long as the can. They promise that privacy is very important for them, so you should not worry about that like I said. They have a very close relation and communication with their users on the Vivaldi blogs and forums and if something privacy related will be discovered, it will be immediately discussed by the fans and fixed by the developers (that google safebrowsing I talked about for example). They also host everyting themselves in Iceland and Norway. A whole different story compared to Opera, so I agree that Vivaldi is safer in that context compared to Opera.
They both use Chromium, so you have all the advantages and security patches that Chrome/Chromium receives and the safebrowsing, which is the same for Opera, Vivaldi and Chrome (i.e. google safebrowsing) Opera used yandex safebrowsing in the past, but I think they don't anymore and replaced it by google safebrowsing.
@Xsjx. You can install all the extensions like the Avira one from the Chrome web store in Vivaldi too. In fact you should be more worried about site tracking you and spreading malware than Vivaldi
