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

Re:it's worth something

[Stinking Pig]

IME Opera is the least compliant, worst rendering browser. It certainly is fast though, except when you're using JavaScript and hit an Opera bug that makes it grind to a halt.

Uh-oh, I said something bad about one of the Slashdot sacred cows, there goes my karma!

Lowsy Interface.

[evilviper]

I really think it's Opera's own fault. No other browser has such a lowsy interface as they do. It's like every decision they made for the interface has been wrong, while the back-end is great. Odd.

Their bookmark system is insane, organized very strangely. Their menus are cluttered and disorganized to a degree that would make the original pre-1.0 Mozilla browser jelous. Closing a tab throws you to the last open one (which is stupid). Also, their bookmarks and other files can't be exported to another format... That attempt to lock-in customers, also works to lock themselves out.

The strangest thing, though, is that their interface on embedded devices is actually pretty dammed good. It seems like the Opera developers NEED restrictions, to prevent them from throwing every weird feature, menu, and kitchen-sink into their browser for no good reason.

If they just had a bit of a better interface, I would personally have bought a good dozen licenses back in the Netscape 4.x days, when there wasn't anything good like Mozilla/Firefox around, let alone the dozens of other small browser projects.

I also could have gotten my company, around that time, to buy several hundred licenses, because they used hundreds of out-dated computers, where the browser was the only one of the installed apps that was CPU/Memory intensive.

Re:Probably not...

[gad_zuki!]

>it's not as if you're web browsing experience isn't overcome with advertising, anyway.

Mine isn't.

Not to mention that ad takes up some serious real estate up top thus making the display window annoying smaller. Sure, this is a quibble, but enough of one so that people don't buy the product when there are free alternatives.

Plus what kind of a name is Opera? Yeah, that's how you win over Americans, name it after an art form they despise.

user1 "Hey, you're using Opera?"

user2 "No, this is Balletmaster 2000!"

user1 "Killer! I'm thinking of switching to GayMarriage 5.0 soon!"

Why I like Opera more than FireFox

[simetra]

I tried FireFox with all the hooplah... But the following keep me using Opera:

• mouse gestures come standard in Opera
  
• adding extentions and themes in FireFox require restarting it every time to take effect
  
• FireFox likes to spawn new instances of itself rather than open a new tab, as it's supposed to
  
• FireFox does not open maximized, ever, for whatever reason
  
• downloading extensions of questionable quality is a hassle in FireFox (where most of this functionality is built into Opera)
  
• Opera has a nice built-in IRC client
  
• Opera has a nice built-in mail client.
  
• Opera has the ability to quickly and easily subscribe to RSS feeds
  
• Thunderbird is a massive beast - at least twice as big as FireFox itself.
  
• RSS reading in Thunderbird is a hassle
  
• FireFox renders some pages - like on Slashdot for example - like total crap.
  

I know that any replies this gets will be like "Well, you just have to do this, this this, this, this this, and this."

But I don't have time or the desire to dick around for hours on end trying to get FireFox to behave as Opera does out-of-the-box. It's free, sure, and it makes you happy, good. But, please don't discount the qualities of Opera just because FireFox is the geekyworld buzzword of the day.

Re:Probably not...

[fireboy1919]

because it does what it does amazingly well ...and the reason people use Windows despite having all those free options out there is because it does amazingly well. Riighht.

Some people go for the underdog just because. Some people are willing to pay for speed at the cost of compatibility. Others get a warm fuzzy feeling when they buy software. Then there are people who these people dupe into believing that Opera is better and who can't make the decision for themselves because they're too afraid (or ignorant) of computers to find out.

Rest assured, this is still a very small portion of the population, and will likely remain so. I like having my browser being a fully programmable interface, not just a text renderer. I have latex for that.

Re:Misleading

[McDutchie]

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.

Very good, the Microsoft monopoly must really appreciate that you have swallowed the party line so well. Not only do you actually believe that a forced tie-in sale equals being "free", you actually go so far as to believe that a Windows license is a necessary expense for running a computer! And to top it off, you got modded "Insightful" for that little masterpiece. Truly admirable! I recommend you apply for a job at Microsoft as soon as possible, they love to have people like you - if you don't work there already, of course.