Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 30th Jan 2008 22:57 UTC, submitted by irbis
Thread beginning with comment 298609
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE: Missed out a key point
by Liquidator on Thu 31st Jan 2008 13:28
in reply to "Missed out a key point"
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
More News »
Sponsored Links



Member since:
2005-07-06
Opera never gained traction because it cost money to not be ad-supported.
The boom of the internet saw the boom of popup and other adverts. People didn't want to use a browser that showed them ads in their toolbar, especially when there were alternatives that wouldn't ... and they didn't want to pay to remove those ads, when they could use another product that was free.
The advert alluded to "grandma" type users that don't care about extensions etc. Well those same people wouldn't have understood why they had to pay for a product that should be free (at least the others were, so why not Opera). This was around the time of those "free" dialup internet connections - the ones that still cost you per minute, but all of a sudden didn't cost a monthly charge. Again, why pay for something if you can have something else for free? It's how the majority think.
It's only recently Opera became "free" financially and I honestly believe *that* has helped it gain traction in the modern browser competition. It's just a shame Mozilla has developed such a community around Firefox, along with all the clever branding and marketing, to drive its adoption. Mozilla were lucky - users were getting frustrated with IE and its ability to get your machine infected, so they were *actively looking* for an alternative. Heck I even remember trying different IE shells, only eventually giving up and going Firefox full time. Once a couple of people got the free Firefox, they became advocates without realising it.
In my defense, I used Opera from about version 3.5 to now, but never exclusively. Even today, it is installed but hardly gets used, even though it feels faster and more efficient. Why? I'm not entirely sure, maybe like the millions of other web users out there, I am a creature of habit, and Firefox has just stuck with me.