Freedom for Opera

By Cyrris

I know quite a few readers of this blog (the majority in fact) use a browser other than Internet Explorer. This makes me happy, and for you people, all the Firefox propaganda on this site doesn’t appear. This also applies to Opera users, because Opera is a great browser, and today it got a whole lot better in that it’s now completely free for everyone.

“Today we invite the entire Internet community to use Opera and experience Web browsing as it should be,” said Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “Removing the ad banner and licensing fee will encourage many new users to discover the speed, security and unmatched usability of the Opera browser.”

Now, I can’t see myself moving away from Firefox, but I actually think that with this move Opera’s gains are going to be at Firefox’s expense. Is that a bad thing? Not really. As much as I would love to see Opera take a sizeable chunk out of Internet Explorer’s market share, I don’t think it’s going to happen because so many of IE’s users are those people who don’t know or care about alternatives. That leaves Firefox, Netscape, Safari, and the other smaller browsers as the ones that are likely to give a bit of their piece of pie to Opera. They are, after all, the ones with users who are actively looking for the best programs to suit their needs. The only way for Opera to eat into IE’s userbase would be a big marketing push… but how could that happen when they’ve given away their only perceivable source of income? I’m sure they have a sound business plan somewhere, but I can’t quite see where it is.