HISTORICAL! Forget Google Chrome, Edge or Firefox, the Opera browser is the first to allow emoji addresses
Yes, forget about Google Chrome, Edge or Firefox because the Opera browser became the first to allow emoji-based website addresses. You can drop .com or words.
In what is a historic move, when it comes to the internet, Opera became the first browser to only allow emoji web addresses instead of standard domains. The Chromium-based browser on Monday announced its alliance with Yat, an emoji-based identification system that involves people buying and selling emoji, via a tweet. The company tweeted: “Say goodbye to boring web links and hello to emojis! All Opera browsers have become, in partnership with @whatsyouryat, the first and only web browsers to enable emoji-only web addresses. Try it while visiting.” They also shared a screenshot where you can see a string of emojis in the address bar instead of the URL
In its blog post, the company said that “For the first time in internet history, users will be able to browse the web by typing a string of emojis into the URL bar instead of letters and words”. Thanks to integration with Yat, Opera users can now drop .com or words in their links and use emojis to search URLs. With its new emoji-centric integration, Opera has now made it easier to find and navigate to Yat pages, which is when a Yat is created from a custom string of emoji. Users can even customize their Yat page or redirect it to anywhere else on the web.
Read Opera’s tweet below:
Say goodbye to boring web links and hello to emojis! All Opera browsers have, in partnership with @whatsyouryat , become the first and only web browsers to enable emoji-only based web addresses. Give it a try by visiting ⛓🕸👀!https://t.co/zZz5NFT2g2 pic.twitter.com/l2zAnqbXPR
— Opera (@opera) February 14, 2022
For example, musicians around the world have already created their own Yat pages, including Lil Wayne, Steve Aoki, G-Easy, Kesha, Young Money, 3Lau, and Disclosure are using Yat. They mentioned, “Lil Wayne’s (👽🎵) yat page (y.at/👽🎵) directs users to his record label, and Steve Aoki’s (y.at/🎂🎵) page takes you to his website. G-Eazy (y.at/🦇🌹), (Kesha (y.at/🌈🚀👽), Young Money, 3LAU (y.at/🎵🎵) and Disclosure (y.at/😎🎵😎) are ready for so will you.” “The partnership marks a major paradigm shift in how the Internet works,” said Jorgen Arnesen, EVP Mobile at Opera.
Also, web addresses on Opera no longer need to be prefixed with ‘y.at’. You can simply put the correct emoji string to visit the relevant webpage. Additionally, emojis embedded in web pages are now automatically linked to the Yat page. The new Opera update supporting emoji addresses only is downloading right now.