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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?"
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.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
All they have to do is get slightly better than IE, and them MS will buy them out.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
That's hardly the bio of a company losing market share. It seems what THEY ARE failing to do is keep their operating costs under control. Even though that rate of revenue growth cannot be maintained in the long run, seems to me like what's really dead is their management for not being able to turn a profit with such revenue numbers.
A blog like any other.
No.
Yes. There is. As long as the others are not suitable for embedded applications Opera shall live. Mozilla has a project to do this, but it is still way off...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
There's room but only as a value-add or niche market.
There's room in the "small embedded" market, such as cell-phones and PDAs, and some vendors that bundle software may prefer a commercial vendor with paid support, especially for things like home-entertainment boxes.
I don't see your typical computer maker shipping a paid-for browser unless they get a REALLY GOOD DEAL, but I do see them shipping a mozilla-based browser.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
Check this out http://www.google.com/ie
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
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
interesting.w w.google.com/linuxt p://www.google.com/bsd
have you tried:
http://www.google.com/microsoft
http://w
http://www.google.com/mac
ht
I started using Opera about four years ago and quickly became hooked. Gestures, fast rendering, etc., made me an instant fan. The single (non-flashing) ad in the corner didn't really bother me.
At some point I'd used it enough that I figured it was worth paying some back, so I registered it (ironically, it looked wierd at first without the single ad block). Best $40 I've spent on software.
I haven't had to pay for an upgrade since then, and I've installed it on my computer at work, my laptop, and my new desktop. At some point I may have to kick down again and I'll probably do it, just like I bought Doom I after playing the hell out of it.
I've used Mozilla a little bit, but it was back when it was way more kludgy than I hear firefox is. I know that I could get a gesture patch and all, but I guess I'm happy with the way Opera handles just about everything (though I still have to load ol' IE to get at my bank's web page and my work's exchange server).
I appreciate the benefits of open source, and at some point I'll probably migrate to Firefox (at the very least it's good to know that if Opera goes under I have a great alternative). But for now, that's one for-profit organization that is building a very good piece of software and has brought some serious innovation to the browser world - I, for one, hope they are able to stick around...
I can't speak for 1.0, but I ran some tests on some large, simple-layout web sites comparing FF 0.92-or-so and Mozilla 1.7-or-so to Opera 7.53-or-4 a few weeks back.
Opera was several times faster than Mozilla. Firefox was about the same as Mozilla. A page that took 10 in Mozilla and Firefox.
All tests were done with local files.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Don't forget that Opera have been living in this niche for the last ten years. Opera has been a paid alternative to free browsers ever since the mid 90s, and now they're stronger than they've ever been.
I used opera a couple times. My faviorite was the "bork bork" version wich translated msn.com into sweedish chef in response to msn.com perposly making itself look broken to the opera browser. Link here to the slashdot story on it: http://slashdot.org/articles/03/02/14/1256231.shtm l
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
I used to use Opera; I paid for the full edition, and enjoyed its many innovative features such as tabs, convenient keyboard shortcuts for things like turning off image display, nice bookmark management, excellent mouse gestures, save-and-restore session, and on and on. At one time, it was the best browser by far for Linux, and it was an appealing alternative to IE on Windows. They really had the UI aspects down pat.
However, it crashed about once a day on my Redhat workstation and no amount of back and forth with tech support could uncover the problem.
Meanwhile, Mozilla appeared on the scene and got better and better. I would say that today, the Mozilla/Firefox family surpasses Opera in enough ways that Opera doesn't really have a niche like it used to.
I still like some of Opera's UI aspects best, but good old Moz is so stable now that it's a toss-up. Firefox has finally stabilized to where it doesn't crash on me 2-3 times a session, and I'm evaluating it as a replacement for Mozilla. Its font handling seems not as good as Mozilla though. I do dearly miss Opera's style sheet extension that lets you force word wrap on any web page with a simple keystroke.
One thing about Opera that bothered me was that they had a cut-off for owners of the previous version; you had to pay to upgrade. At that I drew the line and see no reason to put any more $ into that product, though I still appreciate their alternativeness and wish them well in their fight against the Microsoft titan.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
I've been an Opera user since verison 3 and it's still my favorite browser.
I recently tried Firefox 1.0 and I still like Opera better. Firefox has tabs, but I couldn't put them at the bottom of the screen. And with Opera I can have two sites open -- one with pictures on and one with pictures off -- at the same time.
And there's a buttom on every window (or "tab") that lets me switch between "author" mode and "user" mode. That means if I come across a website that has say yellow text on a white background I can press this button and it'll change to black text on a white background.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
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?
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.
Firefox doesn't run on mobile phones yet, so I figure Opera has a niche there.
Alternatively, I will buy the first phone to ship with the Gecko rendering engine in its web browser.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Opera still blows other browsers out of the water on Windows (yes, that includes Firefox). It's the fastest graphical browser with the best CSS support I've seen. And even with mail, news, IRC and address book included, it's a smaller download than Firefox.
And let's not forget that Opera pioneered many of the features we've come to love, and apparently continues to do so.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Opera is like the BeOS. It's great, but unknown and unloved. If it goes under, it will take the rest of the world years to achieve the same level of excellence. Unless, of course, they open-source the whole thing.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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.
- 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 install Firefox at work. Tabs (MDI) is logical. But there is no built-in contsruct to save the tabs as groups
Actually, there is.
--Asa
Company is European. (Nordic if I remember correctly). Typically European businesses, in particular German companies (I studied International Business and German in collge) tend to have an out look of 15 years. If there are a couple off quaters or even off years finicailly because of marketing or R&D expenses, then typically that is expected and over the long term one should come out ahead. Classic example: European Steel industry putting in efficent plants and equipement. Hell of an up front cost, but here 30 years later when energy prices have increased, put a hurt on the inneffecient US steel industry.
Boeing usually goes to Japan to finace projects like the 777 because Japan has almost a life time "Where do we want to be in 50 years" approach.
Not to say all good/bad/indeffierent, but too often US companies slash marketing and R&D to improve quarterly or yearly numbers and find themselves out of business 5 or 10 years down the road because someone else with forsight developed the better mouse trap or marketing trap.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
A while ago, when mozilla was first released in source I used to use it as a benchmark for burning in new machines (it took a long time to cook one).
Oh boy. twenty different object orientated frameworks and and and. About 1 million lines of code. (I know that's an underestimate).
Never thought anybody would be crazy enough to actually pick up that stuff and run with it.
Too much of a coward myself.
It's a *lot* harder to tear down something and keep it sane than to rewrite. But the firefox crew
(much to my great admiration) managed to do just that. We know it's tough guys. You did a great job. Hope you manage to resurrect composer too...
It's nice to know that great software engineering is alive and well. (Guess what browser I'm using).
Sorry to the Opera people, but the honest truth is that when you insisted on advertising in your browser we all instinctively thought spyware, malware other stuff. You should have reacted to how the world has changed if you wanted to stay in the running...
..as far as I'm concerned is neither one will use the freaking RAM cache properly. I have a 2000 mhtz computer, ultrafast memory, a gillion gig hard drive, but with all browsers but Opera it takes a full second to go back to the page I was just looking at. With Opera it's the blink of an eye. I have no doubt that they are doing it "properly" somehow. Perhaps the page has code to tell the browser to check for updates. But guess what--I don't give a damn! I'll hit reload if I want to check for updates. I like a browser that has my interests first, not those of some webmaster or anyone else. In short, Opera still feels MUCH MUCH FASTER than Firefox or IE, and I'll stick with it until that changes. Lee
expandfairuse.org