Opera Reaches 1 Million Downloads Thanks To Google

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."

Unfair

[dedazo]

When Microsoft does the same thing with IE/MSN, then it's called 'anticompetitive' and 'unfair'.

Lack of competition when you have no competitors is not exactly my idea of monopolistic behavior.

Heck, I'm almost ready to make the case in favor of MSN - at least if Yahoo goes down Google won't have a search monopoly.

I'm not sure now

[Synli]

I'm not sure but was the headline to suggest that "No, Firefox doesn't suck, and it's still THE ONLY decent alternative to IE, because Opera CHEATS! -- They exchange traffic with Google!!!"

If so, then let me quote from the article:
"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. "

A search for "web browser"...

[Thu25245]

...turns up a link to Firefox [google.com] as #1.

But I'm sure you knew that.

Interestingly enough, Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, and Safari are all listed before IE.

And now

[MatD]

And now, we are going to start seeing exploits getting released for Opera. As well as articles about how IE is more secure than Opera. Just give it a little time, trust me.

Re:Unfair

[mat1t]

When Microsoft do this though, they are cross-subsidising, as it doesn't cost them anything to include MSN search with IE.

Google are paying Opera for this, so it becomes a business transaction. Also, Opera is a low market share browser, so it can't be considered anti-competitive. People can choose not to use/install it.

Re:Unfair

[glwtta]

When Microsoft does the same thing with IE/MSN, then it's called 'anticompetitive' and 'unfair'.

Well, "unfair" is sort of a subjective term, but 'anticompetitive' is exactly what it's called when a monopoly uses it's dominance in such a manner.

Lack of competition when you have no competitors is not exactly my idea of monopolistic behavior.

You have an odd idea of "monopolistic behaviour" then: no competitors == monopoly. And yes, just being a monopoly means that you are not allowed (in theory, anyway) to do some things that companies that are not monopolies can.

Heck, I'm almost ready to make the case in favor of MSN - at least if Yahoo goes down Google won't have a search monopoly.

Just because of the nature of web searching, it would be pretty hard for Google to get an MS-like monopoly on it. There's dosens of search engines that work more than well enough; if Google, Yahoo Search and MSN Search disappeared tomorrow, it would have very little effect on people's ability to find stuff on the internet.

stats

[tuggy]

now that opera changed the USER AGENT ID, what i'm really interested is in seeing how much will change in the stats for IE...

Firefox on Mac OS X

[pauljlucas]

Ever use Firefox on Mac OS X or FreeBSD? It sucks, badly.

I agree. Safari has its weaknesses, but it's way better than the OS X port of Firefox. I really don't "get it" when it comes to all the hullabaloo over Firefox other than weening people off IE. If you ignore the IE factor and consider Firefox on its own merits, there's nothing special about it: it's just another browser (at least for OS X).

Re:This is not a good thing

[the arbiter]

If your code is truly "standards compliant", then the only browser you have cause to be concerned with is Internet Explorer.

As for your suggestion that a browser monopoly would in any way be a good thing for anyone...well, you're just wrong.

Thanks to Google

[loconet]

"Thanks to Google"

It goes side by side with the story about MS's worst nightmare being the web as the next platform. In order for this to happen, the web needs to become truely standard across all browsers and platforms. This will not happen with IE the way it is. Google being a major player in that nightmare, needs to make sure MS's handle on proprietary web technologies ends soon. This can be achieved by helping Opera and Firefox which is exactly what they are doing.

Re:yup

[Gnavpot]

I think people would be more familiar with the "web browser" term than the less accurate "internet browser" term.

Actually, most people refer to IE as "the Internet".

I Like Opera

[obarthelemy]

I bought Opera a few years back, and it's till my main browser because

- no virus / exploits, prolly not because it's better code, but because it's so little used that hackers don't bother
- native tabbed browsing (years ago, Ffox didn't have THAT, and Opera's is still good now)
- native mouse gestures, I can lay back and browse without the keyboard, and without endlessly monving the pointer back to the tool bar (I actually switch those off, and use it full-screen most of the time: F11)
- it just works, very few sites have problems with it
- it's easy to switch plugins on/off (flash...)

-> I still haven't found a compelling reason to switch to FFox (which I also installed). But then again I doubt there IS a reason to switch from Ffox to Opera nowadays, except maybe security IF all those alerts about FFox result in a major problem sometime.

The mail client sucks, they should just give up on it. It doesn't support ActiveX, which is a blessing and a curse. And of course, it's closed source. But at least it's NOT M$.

Somebody mod this Firefox zealot down, please?

[linguae]

Opera, while certainly better than IE, hurts the world wide web by dividing the population even further. With more browsers out there, I can't count on my (standards compliant) code working everywhere, and I have to add hacks for each browser to make it work. Things get even uglier when I try to write a "fat" web app - different browsers support radically different scripting standards.

That's funny, because last time I checked, Opera is standards compliant. I never had a problem opening web pages that used proper CSS and XHTML with Opera. As long as you stick to standard HTML or XHTML/CSS, you shouldn't have problems opening your web pages in Firefox and Opera. (IE still doesn't support all of the web standards, unfortunately).

As a web developer, I think there's no reason for anyone to use anything but firefox,

Hate to break it to you, but not everybody thinks Firefox is the best thing since sliced bread. I switched to Opera from Firefox a few days ago because it is much faster and much more responsive on my machine (an old 266MHz Pentium II with 64MB RAM). Free Opera was a godsend to me; I couldn't deal with Firefox using my hard drive swap space any more. And then Konqueror and Safari are also nice, standards-compliant browsers. Opera, Konqueror, and Safari users don't need to drop whatever they are doing and switch to Firefox. Heck, I wouldn't even force an IE user to switch to an alternative browser. Hey, whatever floats your boat....

Re:This is not a good thing

[gasaraki]

I see. So, monopolies are bad and competition is good, but there's only allowed to be ONE competition with the leader at a given time? Your argument can just as easily be applied to eliminate Firefox. Why should you have to support TWO browsers when 90% of the population uses only one (IE)? Firefox is damaging the internet by forcing people to support more than one browser!

Please. This is why we have standards: so the can have both competition and compatibilty. It's not perfect, but no competition is even worse.

Personally, I like Opera better than Firefox

[niteblade]

After the 'going free' announcement, I decided to give Opera another shot (I had previously used it when it had that aweful MDI interface) Anyway, I love it! All around it seems really slick - very quick response, very nice look, and it had a really tight feel (not sure what that is - it just seems very responsive). Overall the most 'professional' feeling browser out imho. I'm just hoping they come out with a badly needed googlebar (I like to do google news and groups searches - not just the web). Once they include that, I'll probably make it my primary browser.

Bob