Opera Facing Losses While Firefox Usage Grows

An anonymous reader submits "Opera, the sometimes forgotten #3 web browser, reported a third quarter loss that tripled that of last year's third quarter despite a seven-fold increase in revenue. Opera is blaming a weaker dollar for the losses, and say they're spending money on marketing and new ventures like teaming with IBM to use their ViaVoice technology. Opera's future seems uncertain as Firefox's growing popularity may hurt Opera by stealing potential customers. With Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari all free, is there room for a non-free browser in the market?"

Comments

Misleading

[fembots]

According to the article, company officials said operating expenses, like adding new employees and spending more on marketing efforts, are partly to blame for the quarterly loss (of $267,000 compared to a net profit of $9.62 million in the first nine months of this year = maybe $3mil difference).

It seems Opera is growing, and they are doing it by aggressively promoting their products, even goes as far as teaming up with IBM's ViaVoice to allow users execute commands by talking to their computers. These are licensed-features that free browsers will find it hard to justify paying for.

So maybe Opera is just investing 25% of its yearly profit into marketing, and hopes a better year. Even FireFox wants to advertise on NYTimes.

We shall be alarmed if they moved to a penthouse office and every employee drives a Ferrari.

Re:Misleading

[McDutchie]

It doesn't cost the user any more or less to use it. It's not like you can buy a cheaper version of Windows without it.

Sorry, "included in the package" still does not mean "free" as long as the package costs money, no matter how much the Microsoft monopoly wants you to believe otherwise.

Note that it's against IE's license (which is conveniently unavailable from the Microsoft website and in the application directory; you only get to see it when you run the installer) to run IE on anything but a properly licensed Windows system. To wit:

SUPPLEMENTAL END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR MICROSOFT SOFTWARE ("SUPPLEMENTAL EULA") (c)2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
IE6 SERVICE PACK 1

IMPORTANT: # snipped diahhrea saying that you have enslave yourself to the Holy EULA or you can't use it

NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A VALID EULA FOR ANY "OS PRODUCT" (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, MICROSOFT WINDOWS 98, MICROSOFT WINDOWS NT 4.0, MICROSOFT WINDOWS 2000, MICROSOFT MILLENNIUM EDITION, MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP, OR ANY OTHER MICROSOFT OPERATING SYSTEM THAT IS A SUCCESSOR TO ANY OF THE FOREGOING OPERATING SYSTEMS) YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO INSTALL, COPY, OR OTHERWISE USE THE OS COMPONENTS AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS UNDER THIS SUPPLEMENTAL EULA.

Capitalized terms used in this Supplemental EULA and not otherwise defined herein shall have the meanings assigned to them in the applicable OS Product EULA.

General. The OS Components are provided to you to update, supplement, or replace existing functionality of the applicable OS Product. You are hereby granted a license by or on behalf of the entity which licensed the OS Product to you to use the OS Components under the terms and conditions of the OS Product EULA for the applicable OS Product (which are hereby incorporated by reference) and the terms and conditions set forth in this Supplemental EULA, provided that you comply with all such terms and conditions. To the extent that any terms in this Supplemental EULA conflict with terms in the applicable OS Product EULA, the terms of this Supplemental EULA control solely with respect to the OS Components.

Additional Rights and Limitations.

* You may install and use one (1) copy of the OS Components on each of your computers running validly licensed copies of the applicable OS Product, provided that you use such additional copies of such OS Components in accordance with the terms and conditions above. Microsoft retains all right, title and interest in and to the OS Components. All rights not expressly granted are reserved by Microsoft.

# (bunch of warranty stuff in capitals omitted)

E.g. running it under WINE would be illegal, at least if you don't own (e.g. have paid for) a Windows license, but the above language could also be interpreted to mean that you can only run it under Windows even if you do own a Windows license. In neither case it is anywhere near "free" though.

Re:Google embraces Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

interesting.
have you tried:
http://www.google.com/microsoft
http://ww w.google.com/linux
http://www.google.com/mac
htt p://www.google.com/bsd

Opera is the best , but I recently swtiched to FF

[guidryp]

I have been using Opera for about 4 years now.

Opera is the slickest browser out there. The interface is great and the features have lots of little subtle twists that make them much better than plugins in Firefox.

Opera also has killer caching that provides instant forward/back ( I mean INSTANT ) through recently visted pages.

But I recently switched to Firefox. So my bet is Opera is toast.

Why did I switch? Compatability. More pages take Mox/FF into account. Like my Bank and Gmail for 2 that are important to me.

Talk to an Opera Zealot or Opera developer and the answer has always been the same. The site is serving bad pages to Opera. And this is generally true. Using a proxy tool to spoof firefox in Opera many of the pages did indeed work, but this is a clumsy solution. Unfortunately the Opera line remains the same. Users should fight to change the bad pages.

Where in my view a true firefox emulation/spoofing mode would go a long way to making Opera more workable.

But I have finally conluded that this is not going to happen. And that Firefox is finally there with the features and compatability intersection that makes it my current browser choice. It is compatible enough, and has features enough.

Opera is now Toast for me.

RIP Opera. I really wish they could have made more effort to handle errant pages than simply telling users to change the world. I will miss the Opera way.