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Google Businesses The Almighty Buck The Internet

Opera Reaches 1 Million Downloads Thanks To Google 287

Posted by Zonk from the product-placement dept.
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."
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Opera Reaches 1 Million Downloads Thanks To Google More

Opera Reaches 1 Million Downloads Thanks To Google

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  • Microsoft Says... (Score:5, Funny)

    by aklix ( 801048 ) <aklixproNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:12PM (#13633823) Homepage Journal
    Opera free? Without ads? But Microsoft says companies can't survive like that!

  • yup (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pizzaman100 ( 588500 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:12PM (#13633824) Journal
    A search for "internet browser" [google.com] brings opera back at #1.

  • Hopefully this well help more people switch from IE. Or at least introduce some of the computer using public to the fact that IE is just a web browser and they can pick from many...

    That is, as long as FF still gets users ;-)

  • How exactly do they plan on making money now?

  • spreadopera dot com (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lonedroid ( 888148 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:16PM (#13633855)
    Damn, I was going to register spreadopera.com and start competing with a certain other browser, but a whois shows that Opera already registered that domain!

  • anyone else see a problem with this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hashfunction ( 861726 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:17PM (#13633865)
    With this kind deal between companies? Sure, it may bring Internet Explorer down, but what does this spell for other browsers who do not have 'deals' with Google?
    • Well, it doesn't matter, as long as we get rid of IE.

      There is no fairness in real life, and this is WAR.
    • huh, what do you mean by 'other browsers'?

    • No problem at all (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Al Dimond ( 792444 )
      It doesn't spell anything for other browsers. They just have to have their own way to raise funds. They can do that however they want.

      If FF and Opera can get Google to pay them for their users searching with Google, more power to 'em. Many would already be using Google in the first place, and the "Google box" is really convenient and easily switchable to some other search engine.

      Of course, that last sentence reminds me a lot of "It's very convenient to bundle a web browser with an operating system and it

  • Unfair (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dedazo ( 737510 )
    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.

    • Re:Unfair (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mat1t ( 772346 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:22PM (#13633910) Homepage
      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 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by glwtta ( 532858 )
      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) t

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

      That's because when Microsoft does it, it IS anticompetitive and unfair. Microsoft always locks everything else out, except their own.

      What Google is doing is inherently fair, because they aren't just playing favorites for one browser/search engine. Microsoft's browser could get in on this deal just as easily as Opera or Firefox, if they weren't so busy being anticompetitive and forcing their crappy search engin

  • Goooooooogle! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stanistani ( 808333 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:19PM (#13633882) Homepage Journal
    *Sigh*
    *bats eyelashes*
    Is there anything they cannot do?

    kinda sick, heh?
    But, hey, I remember when Micro Soft (original name) used to treat its users with a modicum of respect.
    I clasp my hands and hope Google stays, well, relatively Good.
    Right now, a diversity of free browsers looks pretty good.

  • This is a terrible injustice! (Score:5, Funny)

    by badmicrophone ( 858946 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:19PM (#13633884)
    People should pay to see the Opera! after all, when you download it you miss all the fantastic costumes and corpulant players!

    when will the RIAA do something about this!?

  • I'm not sure now (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Synli ( 781075 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:19PM (#13633885)
    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. "

  • And now (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MatD ( 895409 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:21PM (#13633896)
    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.

  • Lots of money in open source? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by recoiledsnake ( 879048 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:26PM (#13633934)
    According to some blogs, there are rumors that the Mozilla foundation gets 30 million dollars a year for the search box in Firefox defaulting to google. Also, only the financial details for 2003 have been made public by Mozilla. So it requires someone to file a special request under the law to check Mozilla's dealings.

    So, remember, everytime you do a search in Firefox, some money goes from google to Mozilla, estimates ranging from 50 cents to 1 dollar per user per year.

    • So it requires someone to file a special request under the law to check Mozilla's dealings.

      Not true. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation the Mozilla Foundation is required to file disclosure paperwork with the IRS every year. These disclosure filings (called Forms 990) are public and searchable via GuideStar [guidestar.org] (requires free registration).

      The Mozilla Foundation's 990s [guidestar.org] are, it's true, only current to 2003. But that's not due to any deep conspiracy; it's just because they didn't file the 2003 990 unt

  • 1,000,001 - thanks google!

  • A thought on how this affects CSS designs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:32PM (#13633985)
    There is no browser out there with full CSS 2.1 support. Not one. Certaintly not Trident (IE's engine). Not Gecko (Firefox's engine). Not KTML (Konqueror's engine). Not Webcore (Safari's fork of the KHTML engine). And not Presto (Opera's engine).

    People talk about designing to the standards, but without a single web browser actually following said standards, web designers on the front lines have to work around different browser's quirks.

    For example, a number of browsers support bits and pieces of CSS 3.0. Gecko and Webcore have support for opacity (translucent elements on a web page); Trident can do the same thing with the non-standard "Filter:" tag. However, Presto in Opera 8 has no support for this.

    The workaround for Opera users is to use a translucent PNG instead. However, a translucent PNG used in mouseovers triggers a Firefox/Windows 1.0.x bug (probably fixed in Deer Park) where the mouseover image will not be loaded unless visible somewhere else on the page (I can mostly eliminate this bug by making the PNG in question visible on the page as a single 90% transparent pixel in the upper right hand corner. Which mostly, but not completely, works around the bug.)

    Basically, with yet another CSS rendering browser out there gaining market share, while only implementing a subset of the CSS standard, web designers now have to work around the quirks of yet another browser. I like this kind of work, but a lot of designers hate this stuff and just throw their hands in the air and make their web page a 100% flash web page or what not.

  • stats (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tuggy ( 694581 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:38PM (#13634031) Homepage Journal
    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...

  • Google as a many-tentacled monster (Score:3, Interesting)

    by l00k ( 910333 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:39PM (#13634041)
    So Google infiltrates yet ANOTHER aspect of the Internet. This strategy of embedding itself into the fabric of the Internet looked cute before the company went on to become the next stockmarket darling, now I can't help but see each new step in increasing its mind-share as Bill Gates in double.

    This stockmarket-listed company's strategy is to 'organise the world's information'. The Internet is resembling one large Google Ad to rule them all!

    Do we believe in the inherent goodness of this corporation's dollars as it buys, sponsors, advertises its way into open source?

  • Unclear summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by TrentL ( 761772 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:48PM (#13634114) Homepage
    The summary of this article is very unclear about the point. To be clear: people didn't download Opera because it uses Google. Rather, they were *able* to get Opera for free because Opera had an alternative revenue stream with Google.

  • Thanks to Google (Score:5, Insightful)

    by loconet ( 415875 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:53PM (#13634149) Homepage
    "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.

  • I Like Opera (Score:4, Insightful)

    by obarthelemy ( 160321 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @05:59PM (#13634199)
    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$.

    • Re:I Like Opera (Score:2, Informative)

      by Norgus ( 770127 )
      I _almost_ switched from firefox to opera, as firefox can be a little clunky on rendering some pages (gets slowed right down by a few sites) and the ram usage is crazy.
      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
  • I'm now firmly committed to using Mozilla for web browsing. But for folks who have older computers with say, 64 or 128 MB of RAM, Moz is just too much of a memory hog. For me, Opera is a nice medium between the overly vulnerable IE (especially pre XP SP2 - ie. almost everyone who has less 256mb of RAM) and Mozilla.

    Now, without the ads, their 800x600 15 inch monitors are much more useful too. =)

    Isn't competition nice when it works?
  • 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

  • Why Opera and not anything else? Well... where to (Score:5, Informative)

    by diorcc ( 644903 ) on Friday September 23, 2005 @11:14PM (#13636091) Homepage

    ..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

  • "All made possible because Opera signed a search referral deal with Google."
    They signed that deal years ago! See that search box in Firefox and IE? Opera introduced that, IIRC.

    According to the announcement, the thing is that Opera has gotten a better search deal with Google than before, so I guess it's partly true. But paid search referrals have been there for ages.

  • This was a very pleasant surprise, snappier at rendering than either Safari or Firefox on a G3 iBook.

    While the UI is somewhat cluttered, most of its features can be tamed or turned off.

    I'm impressed.

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