To the author, you’re in dream land.
“The foundation is old, rendering engine is a trainwreck and the whole Opera architecture currently looks like this”
You have no basis for saying this, unless you have been a core developer in Opera for a long time and had some code ownership.
“Since Opera developers no longer have to spend so much time patching individual web sites and fixing broken architecture, resources can be shifted to adding new features and overall polishing. This also means faster release cycles and quicker implementations of new web technologies.”
Right, the release cycles are needed because they now follow Chronium which has a rapid release cycle. Implementation of new web technologies? You mean getting them served on a silver platter form the Chronium guys and gals.
Regarding resources being shifted, sure, some were probably shifted, a shit-load of core developers got fired during this transition, remember? The whole company is turning into an advertising company, just have a look of their latest acquisitions. For people already trusting Google with their mail and android accounts, there is really no need to give away more of their browsing data to another data-mining ad company just for browsing using a different skin and a few other features here and there.