Fastmail Acquired by Opera!

[Pfolson]

Originally Posted by CyberDyne

...and welcome to the forums

Thanks. Oddly enough, after lurking for several years, I had just registered a few weeks ago, in order to answer a question in the Help forum. Little did I know when I signed up that this discussion was on the way!

[Shelded]

Moderator: Focus on the issues people! We do not allow name-calling ("stooge" [mouthpiece]) and we discourage misinterpretation ("sword of Damocles" [legal threats]) and mocking ("patronising platitudes"). Personal attacks are against the rules and if you cannot be civil here please feel free to cancel your accounts and go away. By the way, bickering with moderators will result in us banning you from the forum.

Clarification -- when I post wearing my moderator hat, it's clear. When I'm just "me" you can feel free to politely challenge what I say, just as any other poster.

[CyberDyne]

Originally Posted by Pfolson

Thanks. Oddly enough, after lurking for several years, I had just registered a few weeks ago, in order to answer a question in the Help forum. Little did I know when I signed up that this discussion was on the way!

And a very good answer it was too. I've just added that piece of .js to my own CP. Thank you.

Originally Posted by Shelded

...//..

Clarification -- when I post wearing my moderator hat, it's clear. When I'm just "me" you can feel free to politely challenge what I say, just as any other poster.

Translation:

[b]Bold = Give No [guff]
Regular = Fire Away

[Shelded]

Originally Posted by Dramatic

Interesting reading through the day. I come here never having used FM, but having heard many recommendations for it, especially from other Opera volunteers. (I never used FM because I have too many mail accounts, about 12GB of archived mail and it would have been too expensive). I've been a volunteer tester for Opera since 2001. I'm not privy to any info on Opera's plans for Fastmail (we heard about the purchase today, too) and am under NDA anyway.

Anyway, my thoughts on this takeover:
The fact that Opera have registered an Australian subsidiary ...

To those who have been demanding a 30 day period. Have you thought about the chaos that would cause?...

For those with privacy concerns: ...People who think unencrypted email is private are fooling themselves.

Lastly, I find it hugely ironic that people who have concerns over privacy and ownership have allowed Fastmail to store their credit card details.

Richard

I appreciate your sentiments. But that's all they are. Here are some of mine:
* Setting up a corporation to hold the new purchase is no big deal and gives us no assurance whatsoever. It may be done simply to have a legal entity to hold the books in the correct currency or to reach the end of the tax year.
* Supporting some users as a different class for 30 days would be very complicated. Supporting ALL the customers with a 30 day money-back offer would be easier-implemented and a nice goodwill touch.
* PGP encryption really is worthwhile, you should look into that.
* Fastmail uses a third-party to handle credit card data, I won't assure anyone, however, that the info is not somewhere on FM servers, but I have confidence it is well-secured. And that information is NOT on the WWW already, <snort>.

[DianeB]

*just delurking so I can follow new replies/posts.

I haven't yet decided exactly what my thoughts are. (I recently turned 59 & age allows one to teeter back & forth awhile. ).

~Diane
**back to lurking status.

[RusVebgo]

Originally Posted by Shelded

[b]Moderator: Focus on the issues people! We do not allow name-calling.

Sorry about that. It's been a long day and I got a bit grumpy by the end of it. The switch to a new provider was unexpected, didn't go smoothly and took much longer than it should have.

I should stop posting now anyway as I'm no longer a Fastmail customer as of a couple of hours ago.

[mrparson]

Originally Posted by NickRem

Maybe they handled this badly. Maybe they could have done something differently. Maybe they couldn't. But we are all intelligent people here, presumably. If you can make your case in a calm, factual, rational manner I am sure they would be more than willing to listen to what you have to say, and maybe even address any negative effects the acquisition might have for FM customers.

There are a lot of maybes here, and maybe that is part of the problem. The calm factual response is, users were given very little time to make a decision to either leave or stay; that is a fact.

I had very little personal knowledge of Opera (you might say, about 1%), but what I did know was that being given hours to make a choice was not the way to handle customer relations.

It took me some time to sign on to FM in the first place not being in my home country, and when I finally believed all was well they sell to another entity that I know nothing about, I have all of a few hours to make a choice. That is the fact.

Now I chose to leave due to this type of treatment, and not knowing what is going on with this new company. I had no interest in letting them have my personal information.

Why if they can wait 12+ hours to allow people to click on "Cancel My Account," could they not give 24-72 hours to make that same choice?
That might be a fact you want to ask them.

There are facts on both sides, and since no facts were forth coming in a time frame that allowed people to make an informed decision, it was better to cancel and move on (or in my case back to Netaddress) then to leap into the unknown, trusting the company that gave no information was going to be up front from this point forward.

Also, I am a bit miffed at FM for running specials to get people to sign up, just before they sold everyone over to Opera. The deal was done, they did not need to do that, and Opera could have run a special once they took over.

Well, there it is in a nutshell; level headed, stated clearly and it is hard to dispute the points since neither of us have all the facts because we were never given them.

[beq]

Sorry for not being able to catch up to this thread 100%, but has anyone from FM other than Bron and Jeremy posted yet? Just curious what they might have said...

[NickRem]

It just seems very odd to me to automatically assume malice on their part. Especially since several people have pointed out that this is how acquisitions and mergers happen. You don't get a lot of time to decide once it's done. And by the time the acquisition is done and announced, your data already belongs to the new owner.

I would understand it if the new owner was some shady corporation, but this is Opera Software, a company that has been around for more than 15 years, and which has an excellent track record if you are concerned about your privacy.

So to sum up, I doubt there was any other way to do it. If this is the way all businesses have to handle acquisitions, why are you blaming Opera and FM for obiding by the law?

[vivil]

I think now an official resume of this thread with official answers can be done ?
a big thread for a big announce... but some of us hasn't time to read similar comments

[mrparson]

Originally Posted by NickRem

So to sum up, I doubt there was any other way to do it. If this is the way all businesses have to handle acquisitions, why are you blaming Opera and FM for obiding by the law?

This is the problem, I am guessing you actually do not know the law, just like I do not know corporate law either. We both are making assumptions, and that is the point I made above; the facts were not forth coming to make an informed decision, only a rapid one.

[Shelded]

Originally Posted by sflorack

I am merely commenting that a press release and a brief email requesting action within a 24 hour period, without detailing each option (refunds, what happens to canceled accounts, etc.) is not "FM like".

Someone already pointed out the Symantec purchase of PGP. I wonder if PGP offered any notice to numerous enterprise customers? I doubt it. Purchasers get personal information all the time, it's expected and even spelled out in many TOS.

I'm guessing there was something about FM's agreement with us which required some clear passing of authorization. This would be something required on the handoff side, not the acquisition side. If this was driven by the legal needs, that would account for the non-FM like behavior. How a zero-day notice could satisfy anyone is a mystery, but if you clicked that you accepted it, it looks like you gave up your chance to complain.

[Shelded]

Originally Posted by garys

Sorry Fastmail users, you are already seeing one reason why I will not continue with Opera. The Opera support forums are simply unbearable due to the aggressiveness they encourage in their fanboys.

Next you will find out how secretive Opera is. You want to know the status of your bug report? Sorry, that is proprietary information.

Anyway goodbye and good luck. My Lux Sci account will be active in a few more hours.

There seems to be no accounting for cultural differences. I hope we don't find the Opera culture to clash with the Fastmail (or EMD forum) culture. If the Opera culture is similar to the Apple culture (know-it-all, better than me) I can do without it. One positive point is Opera did not buy Runbox (both are in Norway!). I found the Runbox representatives (with the exception of wonderful Liz) never were on our wavelengh, they could not understand that the things they said and did upset us. If Opera finds their culture is more like FM, less like Runbox, I like it.

[COUME]

Originally Posted by Shelded

One positive point is Opera did not buy Runbox (both are in Norway!).

If I remember correctly, they are in the same building...

[Shelded]

Ooops, maybe those who use FM and Runbox as alternate/backups would like to know if Opera puts the FM datacenter there