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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?"
I have been a computer technician for years, and I have never ever seen a computer with the opera browser myself. Most people still use internet explorer, the more security aware windows user will tend to use firefox, but opera is nearly unknown.
I don't think anybody has any reason to pay for some unknown web browser, unless it has some amazing features.
If the price is low and the browser is top notch there's hope. IE has security problems galore, and Safari and Firefox still seem to have trouble displaying a certain group of web sites. If Opera can overcome these problems, and incorporate viavoice in a cool way, and people find out about it, they'll throw a few bucks at it. Or ask for it for their birthday.
With Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari all free, is there room for a non-free browser in the market
Rivers, lakes and rain are all free. Bottled water is a $5 billion industry.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
On the other hand, this page works in Opera and IE but not Firefox.
Well, if you were Google, wouldn't you also help out everything that might decrease IE's userbase? I mean, MSN is the default search engine for IE, but Google is the default search engine for Firefox. For all those people out there that think that the URL bar is a search bar, then helping them migrate to Firefox wll surely help them protect their corner of the market.
Open Source Sushi
There's a similar page for MSIE. Are you going to say that that means Google embraces MSIE too?
It's not like Google favours one browser over another. And, even if it did, so what? I don't know about you, but I don't pick what weh browser I use based on the recommendations of one website or another, I pick what web browser I used based upon more tangible and relevant criteria, such as its feature set, speed, user interface, ease of use, etc.
For me that means Opera 7.54 (although I'll soon be installing the second beta of version 7.60). And, yes, I have tried all the alternatives, including Firefox.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"With Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari all free,"
IE? Free? Since when? Just because it comes with the OS (which, might I add, you pay $$$ for) doesn't mean it's free.
Furthermore, what about all the adware, spyware (and for some, viruses) that people have to clear off their harddrive? That takes time, and, "Time is money." And with all the time I've spent doing that with IE..., let's just say with IE, you won't have any "Free time"
As an Opera user, I must say that there is room for a non-free browser. For one, FF doesn't quite have all of the features of Opera (it's getting there, though), and the tabs work slightly differently in Opera that, for me at least, make browsing far faster.
Once FF has extensions for it all, then, yeah, Opera is probably toast. However, until then, as another user pointed out, Opera will be like bottled water to the lakes, rivers, etc of IE, FF, et al.
It 's following the trend set up by Linux. Just as Linux hurt the sales of commercial Unix systems while barely impacting windows strongholds (desktop computing).
Similarly, Firefox targetted the group who wanted multiple featuters (tabbled browsing, low mem usage, mouse gestures etc.) The common man (surfer) stll hasn't heared of firefox - all he wants is the ease of use. He is getting all this with the pre-packaged IE. He doesn't know about the IE securuity risk as security for him is the realm of anti-virus companies and not the browser.
So, firefox impacted Opera's market - no one liked to pay for anything which he can get for free.
It's free. It was free for the Mac. It was free for whatever Unix variant they had a version for. It was free for Windows 3.1 users. It was free for Windows 95 users. Those are all non-bundled with the OS versions. 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.
I couldn't agree more. The reason I can't make the switch to Firefox is that it feels so much more sluggish than Opera. I don't have any speed tests to prove what I "feel" but after a half year or so of using Opera, I can't stand to lose it's responsiveness (same goes for the newer versions of IE, way too slow feeling).
I've got nothing against Firefox, but Opera's responsiveness is worth the money to me.
Opera ads are now Google ads, so they're text rather than graphics ads. Hardly distracting unless you're an ADD sufferer or something.
Not meaning to flame you or anything, but your comment is typical of many that I see any time Opera is mentioned on Slashdot: "I tried Opera x many years ago and it didn't do y properly or I didn't like the way it does z". In almost every case, I find that y and z were either something trivial that a quick change in the preferences could have fixed or something that was changed several versions ago.
You wouldn't try to talk about the Mac platform in an informed manner if you'd used nothing more current than System 7, so why do the same with Opera?
Seriously, I think I could count the number of valid issues that people actually have with Opera's current feature set or user interface with the fingers of one hand after I'd had four of them shot off...
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
You know, you can make jokes about their business model, but you should at least appreciate that they've been there for the last few years. Firefox would not be nearly as good without Opera. Mouse gestures, which I now use throughout my desktop, are awesome. I believe (though I stand corrected) that Opera also had the first good pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing. For many years, it was absolutely the fastest browser on earth, as they say.
Firefox may be better, and it may be free, but it would be half of what it is without Opera to push it on (god knows that that IE hasn't provided any competition, features-wise).
39 dollars for Opera web browser that will most likely be obsolete in 6 months, i can see why nobody wants it...
Firefox & mozilla for free is a much better deal, and just as good in quality and even better if you ask my humble opinion...
Currently we have a near monoculture in web browsers. If you're not using IE, you're pretty damn weird and you can expect many web pages to not work.
As firefox gains in popularity, web developers will have to start writing compatable HTML/JS/etc. and as a result life will become easier for the opera users out there.
Like releasing an IE-only version of their toolbar, and having their desktop search tool refuse to search any browser cache that isn't IE.. is that how they're decreasing IE's userbase?
Aha! You, like a bunch of others in this thread, have pointed to exactly the reason that Opera is worth paying for - it offers the best straight-out-of-the-box convenience of any browser.
People say that iTMS is worth paying for because, while you could *find* the same music for "free," it's nice to be able to go and download stuff that just works, sounds good, etc. Opera is the same thing.
I've seen on this discussion already three extensions I would need to get to make Firefox have features that Opera already includes (gestures, better tabbing, and zooming). Now I understand that it's nice to be able to geek out and get *exactly* what you want with something - I built my own computer for exactly that reason. But most people don't have the time to geek out on every single thing they do - that's why I recommend most people just buy a preassembled computer with their operating system of choice on it. It takes a lot of time to customize every damned thing you use on a daily basis, and to me, when there's a web browser that works just the way I want, it's not worth it to run around trying to make Firefox behave the same way.
Besides the Opera download is 3.5 megs vs. 4.7 for Firefox, so it looks like they've managed to keep it lean and mean without the hassle.
I understand if you like the customization and price of Firefox, but I'm just saying that, for the moment, Opera is *worth* the money for those of us who just want a good browser out of the box.
Uniformed: "It didn't support CSS properly"
CSS support is excellent. Here's there spec sheet:
http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/
Feel free to compare that with Firefox and report back to us.
6 one way: "plugins were a hassle"
What plugins are you referring to exactly? You want a hassle? Trying to get a uniform experience out of Firefox. Firefox has let 'extensions' go too far, letting several things that should be in the core application,and UI tested, be thrown to the dogs. You can let extensions change the behavior if you want, but don't make the user jump through hoops on every freaking install.
Let's take the issue of 'tabbed browsing'. Opera brought it to the browser, and it's evolved naturally. It looked like Firefox was going to follow suit, but somehow completely lost sight of what makes it work. I install Firefox at work. Tabs (MDI) is logical. But there is no built-in contsruct to save the tabs as groups (or god-forbid in the unlikely event Firefox crashes the state of the tabs be automatically saved -- standard behavior in Opera). That's an important thing when you allow a user to interact with dozens of information sources under one instance of an application. So now I need an extension. I go trudging off and nothing exists for Firefox 1.0 that seems to fit this bill. Advantage, Opera. But I can live with that... but what about re-arranging tabs? Same problem. I need an extension. Can't find one. P.S: Mozdev? How about a 'Search' button?
NOTE: *I* know these extensions exist, but are they actually compatible from 0.9? And what about those people who don't know they exist? And what about those extensions that actually overlap (and hence, contradict) features?
And finally, let's say I somehow get Firefox behaving logically with respect to tabs and I'm happy. Until I sit down at my co-workers machine and he's got completely different extensions doing similar, but ultimately confusing things.
Sometimes, it's worth a few dollars to have someone else just get it right. Yeah, that's an opinion. Everyone's got one.
and http://www.google.com/unclesam
What these do is narrow your search.
(theoretically) if you search on google.com/linux, you will only get results pertaining to Linux. Ditto for all the other options. This has been around for a long time, it's not some conspiracy.
My sig would have been a lot cooler if
Microsoft effectively put the browser market out of play when they released theirs for free, why should anyone pay for a product when an acceptable alternative is free, to download porn 100 times faster?
Browsers have been free for too long, and the fact is, people don't use browsers because of features...they use them because of compatibility.
That's probably the #1 obstacle to wide acceptance of Firefox right now: if it doesn't display all IE pages correctly (regardless of compliance to W3C standards), it won't be adopted.
Right now, my company has a lot of internal apps that are built to run only on IE. Would I love to switch to Firefox? Sure. Can we do that without spending millions rewriting existing apps? Nope.
So Opera is an alternative browser that is not only more expensive that Firefox, it might not totally support all IE functionality. NO chance that would catch on in the enterprise. At least Firefox has a shot at catching on as the next 3-5 years' worth of apps get written...you can be sure I'll encourage management to write cross-browser apps, or Firefox-only apps, because Firefox is a safer/"better" browser to use.
That's a compromise: "Hey, this new browser might not run all our legacy apps 100%, but the software is free, it doesn't have all of IE's security holes, and we're gonna have to rewrite those legacy apps anyway."
With Opera, the cost of the browser negates the savings on security. Sorry guys, but selling web browsers is like selling shareware: it's fine for a hobby, but not for a business model.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
That's IE 6 SP1. Show me where I can get IE 6 SP2, which I paid good money for, without spending money.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
- New versions are no-cost downloads for supported versions of Windows.
- IE is also a no-cost download for MacOS
- All browsers are affected by various security issues. Need I remind you that the current version of Mozilla is 1.7. 3 ? This is solely due to security issues.
- The money-delta between using Mozilla on Windows and IE on Windows is $0.00. It's free enough for the purposes of this discussion.
Stop karma whoring.I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I agree, the extensibility of Firefox is a very powerful feature. The problem I've found is that there's little if any interoperability between extensions, leaving those of us that would like to use gestures to control our tab extender, etc. having to code our own.
I would never argue that Firefox isn't a great browser and extremely powerful/configurable, but in terms of integrating various features it leaves a little bit to be desired at times. I guess if I had the time I could roll my own extension that combined all the functionality I would like but then, I could just use Opera too.
But you must own Windows XP to get the update. Not Windows 2000 or Windows 98. If you want the latest IE, you *must* buy the latest Windows. Since that requisite purchase of Windows is neccessary before the "free" upgrade to SP2, the new IE is not free.
It's like going to the amusment park and the sign says "all rides free, admission $40".
I agree with all of your comment.
I'm working on a P3 450MHz PC a lot of the time (running Debian), although I have a 1.8GHz next to it, I do most of my work on here. I try and try Firefox but I just can't live with it, it feels horribly slow compared to Opera.
Definitely with software, there's an aspect of "tricking" the user into thinking the software's fast. I remember reading somewhere about loading times of Linux vs. Windows machines and that there actually wasn't much in it simply because of the graphics that the Windows loading screen uses. On an identical machine here, when I time it, Linux is only a few seconds behind Windows loading, with no boot caching system etc.
The post I saw put it down to things such as... when Windows loads the screen stays black for a little bit, then the logo fades in.. a sequence that uses a few seconds, the fast moving scrolling bit makes the user think the machine is working hard, even if it shows no useful sign of how far through the bootup process the machine is. Likewise, when you log into a domain on Windows 2000/XP, you get another fast scrolling image that seems to serve the same purpose. Watching a new FC3 install I've just done... it seems to take forever as the progress bar moves very slowly while it loads.
Example with Opera - when I hit Ctrl+N for a new tab or use the gesture, the window immediately turns white, and the focus is put on the address bar. [b]Then[/b] the tab is put in the list, the window title changes etc. Doing the same in Firefox, what appears to happen is the title bar changes, window turns grey, address bar put into focus then the window turns white. It could be that Firefox is using XUL and that's slower on this older machine, while Opera's using Qt.
Perhaps it's more streamlined code? Either way, even if people complain that you're just deceiving the user, it certainly doesn't do any harm and greatly improves the user's experience - should this be a focus point for Firefox?
and you are forgetting one thing. I dare anyone to show me an embedded version of any of those browsers.
I can get Opera in 120K for embedded uses. there is no embedded IE that is worth a damn, and the Gecko engine is not designed for embedded uses.
Opera is cleaning up in the embedded market, I see it in many tiny net enabled places almost every day.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And Opera isn't slow at all, even with all these features! On slow systems, it is very noticeable. Opera is much faster and more responsive than other browsers.
Clever signature text goes here.
They're reporting losses in downloads, I imagine, which would be much more accurate then using server logs because of said browser spoofing. Since you can only download the official client from Opera, this is really easy to track.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Stop being a prat. True you pay for the OS in which IE is included(well most people do), but given that most people need that OS(haven't seen a linux distro which is ready for public consumption yet, though it works perfectly for my won needs), we can say that the OS license is a necessary expense for running a computer. Since IE is bundled with a necessary expense it is essentially free. Perhaps not as in speech, but as in beer, and all things considered most people are for more concerned with free beer than free speech. Judge this as you will.
Opera's web standards support is flawed. Period. DOM-compliant Javascript that works PERFECTLY with IE or Mozilla, blows on Opera.
Also, Try to open an XML page with XSLT stylesheet on Opera. Heck! It doesn't work. Wanna know why? Check their STUPID logic for rejecting XSLT. Apparently they confused XML+XSLT (great) with XSL-FO (horrible), and provided neither.
XSLT *was* the future. No more fighting for table rendering etc. You just displayed an xml webpage, and the browser would add ALL the necessary markup. *Instant* templating. Client side.
Just think about HOW MUCH BANDWIDTH could've been saved by using XSLT.
But Nobody will ever DARE to use xslt on their website, guess why. Because Opera doesn't support it and NEVER WILL.
Thanks a lot, Opera. Your stupidity contributed to stalling the web for another 10 years.
i'm really not trying to insult anyone, but i have two good reasons why i use opera for porn surfing.
1) opera has this cool feature called "next". if you go to a gallery with a bunch of photos, you can just hit space bar or click "next" to automagically go to the next hot pic. this avoids the complexity of maneuvering the mouse, hitting the "back" button, and clicking on the next thumbnail. when you spend time looking at a whole lot of porn, this really speeds things up.
2) no-one ever looks at your opera cache/history for porn.
And they say: The primary focus of Minimo to date has been system with ~32-64 MB of RAM, running Linux and using the GTK toolkit.
Not to belittle their efforts, but 32-64MB of RAM is more than your average palm top device, and GTK is a memory hog. Something that fits in 2-4MB RAM is more like what a portable device needs.
Still, it's a good start.
Oh, I suppose when we pay for Windows, we are only paying for the kernel....the Windows Control Panel, the file manager, Outlook Express, the Start Menu, the Explorer Shell and the Add/Remove Programs list are all free right?
I suppose when you buy a car, you are only paying for the engine too right? The pedals, steering wheel, transmission and all the other stuff that makes it work (face it, MS has enbedded IE so far into the OS it "makes Windows work") are all free, right?
Also, read the IE liscense agreement, it is most definately not free, you just assume it is, because you are a pirate (not that I haven't done it too, but at least I admit it). Does this sound stupid to you?
"I got a free car! All I had to do was steal it. But it was still completely free!"
Because that is essentially what you are doing.
Please grow a brain before placing your opinions which I will group in the same category as my trash and try not to clutter the internet even more.
That's rediculous. I used to have a motherboard that wasn't supported by any Linux distro under the sun so in order to install linux I would have to buy a new motherboard ... does that mean that linux is not free?
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
LOL...I've used Opera for several years and I can assure you that virtually nobody out there gives a flying shit whether their website works with Opera. And you can bitch about XSLT support all day long, but from a user's perspective Opera is the best of the lot. Period, end of story.
Oh, and none of these website designers give a flying fuck about bandwidth. The fact that 95% of all websites are built with either Dreamweaver or Frontpage proves that.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
O.K I'm probably too late for the mods to take ths up, and as such nobody will notice this, but I'll try anyway.
Everyone has been mentioning the superior featureset of Opera, saying its innovative, listing things like good CSS support, the instant back/forward caching, but they forgot one!
Auto-refresh! This is the best feature EVER you can set a page to refresh every N seconds, do you know how useful that is for forum whores and the like?
--
The last digit of pi is four.
I can download a copy of IE without having to pay for it. Ergo, it is free.
I can download Doom III from suprnova without having to pay for it. Ergo, it's free?
- dshaw
Opera is very much in the running! They have millions in cash, and are simply taking a strategic loss to expand, in order to make more money in the future.
Slashdot, as usual, managed to twist this into being some sort of death knell for Opera, and threw in some irrelevant nonsense about Firefox. Fact is, Firefox is irrelevant in these numbers. PC revenues are increasing, not decreasing, despite Firefox's entry in the market. But it's in the mobile market Opera is expanding, and Firefox is completely irrelevant there.
You completely failed to read the article, and notice this?
"Opera reported a net profit of $9.62 million in the first nine months of this year"
And why did Opera take a minimal loss?
"Opera has leveraged its increased sales volume to expand the company."
I know this is Slashdot, though, so I don't blame you for shooting your mouth off without knowing what you are talking about or even bothering to read the article :)
Clever signature text goes here.
>but given that most people need that OS(haven't seen a linux distro which is ready for public consumption yet, though it works perfectly for my won needs)
:)
Haven't seen a Windows distro which is ready for public consumption yet.
'Opera also has killer caching that provides instant forward/back ( I mean INSTANT ) through recently visted pages.' You are so right about this. I use Opera when a site doesn't work in Firefox and this is the one feature I really miss when I return.