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Opera: Firefox User Figures 'Inflated'

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the soem-valid-points dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "ZDNet notes, 'The chief executive of Opera Software claimed on Monday that the market share figures for Mozilla Firefox are inflated, due to its support for link prefetching" In addition, "Opera has a better caching mechanism so it doesn't access Web sites as often as other browsers" and "Opera is configured by default to identify itself as Internet Explorer' "

9 of 810 comments (clear)

  1. Thanks Opera! by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Opera is configured by default to identify itself as Internet Explorer

    In other words, they provide skewed data that helps Microsoft present itself as leader of the browser market. That's intelligent, way to go. At least you could have picked up a F/OSS browser to masquerade Opera...

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  2. Double-click by FTL · · Score: 5, Interesting
    There's another factor at work. IE and Opera both understand that many users double-click everything they see. These browsers filter out the double clicks. Mozilla on the other hand fires off two requests. Thus doubling its market share.

    Bug 55279 tried to fix this five years ago. But the feeling was that Mozilla users were smarter than the average user and wouldn't do this (which may have been true back then). Bug 238159 attempted to address just one aspect of the problem, double-clicking submit forms (which causes tons of race conditions). But again, nobody seems to care.

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  3. Re:Whose fault is it? by Roofus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, it could potentially show how *little* Opera is actually used by comparison. If that's the case, I think the Opera guys would rather keep that number hidden so the can say "We've got many, many users, and if we didn't hide ourselves as IE, you'd see how mighty we are!"

    I'm not saying that's the case, but the thought came to mind....and for the record I actually purchased a copy of Opera a few years ago.

  4. Why? by natron+2.0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FTFA:

    "A lot of people don't like our ads, which is sad as we don't have a rich sugar daddy like the Mozilla Foundation. They [the Mozilla Firefox team] don't have to think about money as they're being funded. We're not being funded," said von Tetzchner.

    Rich Suger Daddy?!? No. Firefox users feel generous enough to donate to the foundation to help support a great FREE browser. This type of competition bashing is not good for business.

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  5. Re:This is Interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Even though some may take that as joke, it is not necessarily true. Competition is competition. If I were Opera I would want to be better than Mozilla AND better than IE and any of the small fries (Konqueror). Even now, I don't see how "sticking together" with Mozilla would be in Opera's best interest. The standards for the Web are open, whoever implements them best should be acknowledged. Finally, if your main or only goal as a browser is to "beat IE" then as a browser you will ultimately fail.

  6. Re:Identify by OldSchoolNapster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Many sites have all sorts of BS warning popups, redirects, and restrictions on browsers other than IE (often not placing restrictions on firefox btw) even though they render and work just fine in Opera. The folks at Opera have decided that the user experience is more important than their stats.

    Anyone know if Opera is now or ever has been a profitable company? I really hope so, because even with low stats a profitable browser company that competes with both free bundled IE and free firefox makes a powerful statement.

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  7. Quick survey by Leroy_Brown242 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You walk down the street,a nd ask people what the computer program Opera does, you'd get no answer in 100.

    You do the same thing with Firefox, and people know what you're talking about as mcu as they don't.

    I don't need any hard stats and figures to know that Firefox has made a more profound impact on people and the internet than many other things in a long time.

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  8. Some anicdotal info by amichalo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So my non-technical father calls me the other day to tell me all about this new Browser called Firefox that the tech support guy at AT&T (his dialup provider) told him would help with the popups he was fighting against.

    This is the first time I have ever heard of a tech support person, save at AOL/Netscape, recommending an alternative web browser.

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  9. Re:This is Interesting by Anonymous+Custard · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

    I avoid IE because of security problems, but ironically I need to use it to get Windows security patches.

    They do say "If you prefer to use a different Web browser, updates to Windows may be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center", though.

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