But none of that is relevant because it just isn't very plausible that Google would intentionally exploit a bug this way in their compiler specifically as a way of attacking Opera. They used a valid optimization technique that does save some space, and does conform to the standard. Did they likely test it extensively in Opera? No. But to act like this is an intentional offensive move is conspiracy theory level nonsense.
Please reread this thread: it's documented that they make intentonal offensive moves. They do them openly, nothing hidden. It's sad that such acts are ignored: as the article says, they are as bad as Microsoft in the worst days of anticompetitive behaviour. Check who here tries to hide this by inventing the "conspiracy theories."
I'm not denying that Google has had an antagonistic and underhanded strategy against Opera. What I'm denying is that they intentionally designed their compiler to exploit some obscure corner case in Opera so that very large JS files fail as some master plan to break Twitter on Opera.
It's not that I think Google is above using dirty tactics. It's that I think Google is above using dumb tactics.
I mean, are you seriously suggesting that Google assigned someone to comb through known Opera bugs, looking for one that they could exploit in their compiler while masquerading the exploit as a legitimate optimization? And then they assigned someone to implement that optimization? All in the hopes that someday a 4.5MB JS file would come along and break a popular website under Opera? And ignoring the facts that a) Opera might have fixed the bug by that time, b) said popular website might permanently switch to a different compiler when that happened, and c) it would take the Opera team a small fraction of the time Google had spent on this to put out a patch?
I haven't seen anybody before you in this thread describing the very approach you write about. The answer to your "are you suggesting" is: no, it's you who are suggesting.
My point is, in the light of the all bullying tactics against Opera, the community should definitely have less tolerance to Google than it has. In five words: Monopolies bad, supporting Opera good.
Well that seems like some pretty severe backpedaling, since by bringing up past offensive tactics by Google, it was imminently apparent that you were implying this was another example of an offensive tactic.
But regardless of who is good and who is bad (and trust me, I have plenty of bad feelings toward Google myself), this was fundamentally Opera's mistake, not Google's. There is nothing in the ECMAScript standard that says that there is an upper limit on how long a statement can be, and that's the end of the matter.
It is certainly an another example of an anti-competitive tactic and the most probable scenario they achieved it was by ignoring Opera's existence on as many levels of their organization as possible, otherwise it just wouldn't happen -- if you know your "clever trick" doesn't work on one of the browsers, you wouldn't implement the "clever trick" as an universal solution. As such, it's not an accident, it's a consequence of their political decisions (something like "to all our teams: we don't like Opera, do pretend it doesn't exist, do force their users to switch" etc). It's bad enough, no need for more complex "conspiracies."
