Compared to Lars, Jon was hands on, and connected with the staff and products. I think I can count on one hand the times I saw Lars eating in the canteen. The company changed a lot after that, and not necessarily for the better.
What made Opera great was the people working there. The amount of knowledge and raw talent that lived in the tight hallways of Waldemar Thranes gate 98 was impressive. Looking at Vivaldi's "Our Team" page, it looks they have almost recreated the same team from back when I joined. I miss that period!
I had the pleasure of working with the people from Fastmail while they where owned by Opera Software. I had a lot of respect for how they operated their systems back then, and I'm sure it's even better today.
I miss all the Tim Tam's they brought to our Oslo office!
During the first larger round of layoffs that happened in the "original" Opera Software, the Head of HR stood in front of the employees and managed to say something like "We are not 'downsizing', we are just 'right-sizing'".
Personally, I think it is because search is a important revenue stream for the browsers. It makes little sense to put too much effort in to a feature that will limit the usage of the thing that earns them the most.
At Opera Software, where I worked for a decade, both speeddials and bookmarks was important streams of income, but it was nothing compared to the income from searches.
As a person "self-diagnosed" with aphantasia, I feel cheated knowing that other people have a built in cheat-sheet. No wonder why I was struggling with memorizing things like the multiplication table in school.
10 users with simple needs = complex software.