Browsers are changing, and they are changing the way you consume content. While Google has had a vice-like grip on the most popular of all apps on everything from desktops to tablet and smartphones with its Chrome browser, things are changing. A lot of low-end and mid-range smartphones now come with pre-installed browsers from companies like Opera and UC. While initially, these companies thrived on offering data compression for the user, thus reducing their cost of accessing the web, now the browser companies want to curate content and decide what is best for their user. UC has been doing this for a while in India, and its US News app as well as the news feeds within the browser have been very successful. In fact, this has brought in a lot of new users, thus increasing the overall pie in India.
Now, its rival Opera, the world’s oldest surviving browser, is set to launch a new content platform for Indian audience. Sunil Kamath, Opera’s vice-president for South Asia and Southeast Asia, says they have signed up 25 partners in India for Opera Feeds, which is expected to be launched soon. UC has scores more—from large publishers to standalone bloggers and smaller websites.
Opera offers their white label browser to many Indian smartphone companies and thus clocks huge volumes. The idea is to double the number of users in 24 months. Opera, founded in Norway, is now owned by China-based consortium which seems to have brought in a change in the way the company thinks and operates. “In the earlier structure, we didn’t have the flexibility of investing in markets. Today, we are focusing on distribution and hitting number one spot on Google Play frequently, because we are investing heavily on acquisition. This is something the new Opera brings, to get more aggressive in markets like India. That is very exciting,” says Kamath, adding that the company is now able to couple a good product with the right amount of spends on distribution.
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“This is key for a cluttered mobile market like India.”
Opera’s new owner, the Chinese Web Tycoon Zhou Yahui, believes in a clear strategy for the internet, that of “users first, experience next and monetisation follows.” This will be how Opera operates from now on.
Opera’s focus will be on building more relevant content and thus getting the non-English speaking user on board. “We are studying what is important for him. The definition of Internet varies for person to person and we don’t have a silver bullet.” The Opera browser has for long had a ‘Discover’ tab that let users find relevant content from multiple sources. The company is now building on this for its new offering with mix curated of algorithm-based feeds. “We will have a team working on a curated push and based on what has been consumed this will initiate the algorithm, making it smarter as time goes.” The new product will have some new features like API-driven feeds from video on demand partners and YouTube.
Opera’s strategy for now seems similar to US. “We will be partnering with anyone and everyone relevant to the ecosystem. We know we have a strong influence on what people consume and will go deep to reach out to local partners,” says Kamath, underlining the roadmap for the coming months. He says the focus will be clearly on increasing the overall pie of users than trying to poach from other products.
Incidentally, rival UC Browser too has made considerable investments and inroads in the Indian mobile content scenario in the past few months with its US News product. In fact, UCWeb, which is a part of Alibaba Mobile Business Group, has announced that it will invest R2 billion in India and Indonesia over the next couple of years to “tap the huge potential of user-generated content”.
However, while this is a good place to be in as a user, it is also a challenging one. A curated newsfeed, whoever it comes from, is subject to bias. For a user who makes a call not to expose himself to other sources can easily be influenced by what’s available on his feed, even if that is not the true or complete picture. We say a good example of this in the US with Facebook. There is only one way to fix this as former Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner told me recently: “It is up to the readers now to ensure that they get their news from multiple sources and don’t fall prey to a single algorithm.”
nandagopal.rajan@expressindia.com