Opera Unite. Is it all it's cracked up to be?

Ok, started the day reading a post suggesting you could Host Your Own Facebook With Opera Unite. That sounds cool. I was thinking it is html 5 web server in a browser support brought to Opera. Wow, finally a major browser picking up from Google Gears. This is the start of a revolution. That's what I was thinking.

So I did a little research. Just curious. Watch a little you tube demo

Cool. Different to what I was expecting, but interesting. Asks a lot of questions like would I want to leave my machine running? but it could be a great idea.

An article asks Is Opera Unite a revolution, or is it just the fat lady singing?. After reading that I'm feeling a lot less inspired. The limitations implied by the video are also brought up here. So lets see what Oopera have to say for themselves.

The Opera Unite developer's primer follows on and basically sounds kind of locked in. Maybe I'm just biased toward Google Gears but opera's effort doesn't mention local storage. It implies you'll always be connected to the web and really just seems to push a web services model. That's fine but I can't see why I'd develop for this solution when it seems quite proprietary. There's no mention of HTML 5 or any other standard.

My one test for most things is whether it will fit with any current or future standard. Google, I feel, work with standards and encourage them. That's why I like them. I'm not certain Opera do. Shame. It sounded good at first