Norway’s Opera Software abruptly changed course yesterday, announcing they’ve not only removed the built-in banner advertising from their 10 year-old alternative Web browser, but the software is now available for free download, no strings attached. A premium support program is still available for $29/year—Opera’s former purchase price—promising 24-hour email responses to support, migration, configuration, customization, and installation issues. The Opera browser is available for a variety of operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, and Linux.
Opera is one of the longest-standing alternatives to browser juggernauts represented by Internet Explorer and the Netscape/Mozilla amalgamate, and while some of its behaviors can be quirky, Opera offers a surprising breadth of features (including tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, integrated search, and built-in IRC and RSS clients) and commands loyalty from many users for its speed and some features’ clever and perceptive implementations.
Opera has been focusing on the embedded browser market, with versions of Opera being crafted (and licensed) to smart phones and PDAs, home media applications, and vertical market solutions; these partnerships presumably put Opera on sound enough financial footing that the company is willing to forego revenue from licensing a browser to desktop computer users in exchange for the possibility of increasing the browser’s visibility and market share.
