Opera Reaches 1 Million Downloads Thanks To Google 287
auckland writes "More than one million people have downloaded the Opera browser in the days since Opera announced it was dropping the ad banner and going completely free. All made possible because Opera signed a search referral deal with Google." From the article: "'The current most important deal now is with Google,' the spokesperson said to Mr. Malik. That deal, and similar ones with Amazon and eBay, give those companies prime placement in the Opera search box. Mozilla has a similar arrangement with Google, with its search box and its default right-click menu search option on highlighted text sending queries straight to Mountain View."
Re:So what is their business model? (Score:3, Informative)
Wyatt
Re:So what is their business model? (Score:3, Informative)
ah, no (Score:1, Informative)
They also seem to get to hire the best Mozilla developers, but I'm not sure if that's part of the deal.
Re:Unfair (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So what is their business model? (Score:1, Informative)
"only about a third of our revenue comes from our desktop business"
"Today our browser works in most midrange to high-end phones. We can easily adapt them to any mobile platform. We even have a browser for Microsoft smartphones. It's better than Microsoft's own mobile browser."
"Q: Apart from Nokia, what other major phone makers are bundling Opera -- and do they pay for it?
A: Motorola (MOT), Sony Ericsson, Kyocera, BenQ, Casio -- and we get paid for each unit shipped."
Unclear summary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I Like Opera (Score:2, Informative)
But the thing that dragged me back to firefox was that in opera the mouse gestures were utterly poor, even after I changed to a custom set of gestures that took me about 10 minutes to figure out. It wouldn't always recognise a gesture, my gesture that was supposed to close tabs wouldn't always work, of my gestures for next/previous tab only 1 would ever work.
In short the firefox 'all-in-one-gestures' extension works a lot more reliably and the Opera gestures were hell (for me at least)
Why Opera and not anything else? Well... where to (Score:5, Informative)
..start??
-First to have true tab support, reaaally fast tabs not chunky pieces of flab. Hit Ctrl+N one minute, you end up with a bazillion tabs. Yeah you can fill all those up and use them. Try clicking (shift+clicking) to open new links everywhere.. And then use the smart Ctrl+Tab to browse the last viewed pages, or all of them easily. You can easily figure out which page is what (from the titles) in a list of 500. How more pages would you want to fit in a browser?? Aside for that, really cool cascading or even tiling (right click on the tab for more options)
-Actually, if you're new and learning right click everywhere and pay close attention to the options revealed. The true power of the Opera is under the hood. And that is the OPTIONS everywhere. The older Opera versions had the options more out front, but that seemed to scare a lot of "lazy/zombie" users away, thus the new slick interface with more options as you go was created.
-Just think about this, compare the flab of FF or anything else to the slickness and tightness of Opera. So tiny, yet so many features well integrated. Thats one thing that adds to security, WITHOUT limiting any plugin possibilities. The set features are good, they have a reason of existance. If you need anything extra, all you have to do is know java, and you can stick it right in the interface WHEREVER you want it. For example, I have a bunch of applets here and there, one as a dictionary to pick up German words and give me English/Greek equivs. You could make anything, its up to you.
-If you're more of a seeker, once examining of all the interfaced options, go ahead and dig in the O dir, view all the ini files and see what you can do there. Opera's options are everywhere, left and right. But the idiot, even if he stared, would see nothing but pixels.
-I read a lot of silly comments like, oh, why can't opera have X behavior, X keys, X mouse gestures X whatever... Geez folks, are you that dumb? I was expecting to find nerds on here, not a bunch of hillbillies :P
All the above and a lot more can
be changed and defined in the said
options/prefences, just look around!
Getting to know Opera will only benefit you,
your surfing speed, and yields from the web.
-E-mail, and irc client also included. The e-mail client is more than I could ask for as far as e-mail goes. I read something about Active-X, and was like WTF??? E-mail was supposed to be, and SHOULD be text, and just text, no stupid html, with active x and active S and whatever else could bloat it more and make it a whole lot buggier. Opera's mail client is really powerful, smart and above all tiny and integrated. All in one sort of thing. The irc client is basic, but what else do you expect from a browser? Opera is basically your working swiss army knife, but don't expect a generous spoon for irc, why bload the code? Its pretty good for when you only have 5 mins, and want to use e-mail, irc and browse on someone else's comp.
-As mentioned somewhere above, opera can still run on my old crappy 333 laptop, FAST and efficiently. I barely notice the difference between my AMD 64 3400 and that piece of shit. (Except for screen size, and well, you can't overtab it.)
-But thats not all, I have been following and watching the behavior of those behind opera. And their stance on things. For example, the whole of Opera as a team are strong believers that all the options/prefences should be in the hands of the users. After reading the really dumb comments above, I must say, that if you don't like that overmentioned placed google search box. GO AHEAD AND REMOVE IT. I don't see why you would, since it IS USEFUL, but if you really want to... You have to dissasemble Opera, then find string x.... NO All you have to effing do is right click on the said box, and do.. remove from toolbar. TADA. Now you can go ahead and replace that with Yahoo, Xoo, Kaboo, kazavooo Whatever the heck you use. (I personally use fravia's set)
Sometimes slashdot is funny, but sometimes it is truly
Re:This is not a good thing (Score:3, Informative)
With several browser with about the same market share, the impact of viruses/worms targeting specific browser flaws will be lessened.