Opera and it's server side compression have helped me a lot over the years to overcome issues like slow connections or strange operator proxys blocking access to websites such as the strange case I came across back in 2008. Fortunately, networks have become faster and other strange effects caused by meddling with data have also receded so I usually use the full Opera browser these days instead of Opera Mini or the Opera Turbo functionality. But every now and then I end up in a GSM-only place and so far the server side compression always helped. Well, up until now.
When I recently wanted to use Opera Turbo again to browse my favorite websites in a bandwidth starved area it took a long time because all advertisement I can block so conveniently locally with a modified hosts file had to be loaded again. Not only did it take long to load the pages due to the advertisement but splash screens and other intrusive advertisement is just not my cup of cake. So after about 30 seconds I switched off Opera Turbo again and resorted to a non-proxied connection, which was not slower for my favorite pages than using server side compression as all advertisement was stripped out. And not only was it not slower, I also didn't have to put up with splash screen advertisement. So for me the days of using server side compression to speed up my web experience in bandwidth limited areas are definitely over…
From everything I’ve read about spdy/http2 it should greatly reduce the need for Opera Turbo / Chrome “Reduce data usage” and it will likely be Published around February! I’m sure mobile browsers will soon be defaulting to http2.
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