Comments on: Happy Birthday, Opera

By: nataxia

nataxia — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:28:48 +0000

@thomashansen I’m just wondering why Opera has no market share after 15 years. Why people chose Firefox over Opera, for example. I’m interested in why some products compel individuals to use them, and others do not. ‘Market’ is a concise way of describing the patterns evolving out of a free interchange of value for benefit between free players, be they individuals or other entities. It seems that Opera has done well gathering share of mobile platforms in partnership with Symbian, as well as with Adobe et. al. It is always nice to hear that a company employs 300 people and is profitable. They have not done well gathering a significant share of the “regular people who surf the internet” segment. This is of particular interest to me as their brand is foundationally populist — standards and such — when in fact that brand, qua brand, has not done well with the populace. “Opera technology” has done well, being a nice rendering engine which plays well with mobile (I’m assuming you are right in your analysis — I haven’t studied this topic in depth). I am noting they have simply not built a compelling browser — the interface is not usable enough, clear enough, perhaps? Why don’t people use it? This might be a good question for their team to discuss.

By: ialexi

ialexi — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:37:42 +0000

@tarunbk
Maybe I’m just being picky, but wouldn’t “WebKit” be more accurate than “Chrome” regarding innovation? Almost all of the rendering engine innovations in Chrome come from the WebKit project, which is used in Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, Apple’s iPhone, Palm’s Pre, Nokias N60, and several other places.

By: ThomasHansen

ThomasHansen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:30:39 +0000

@nataxia
Opera employs about 300 people, and they MAKE money (have profit)
.
Sure they only have like 2% of the desktop market share, but they’re actually HUGE on the “mobile web”…
.
Beside Opera had the solitude walk of promoting standards before even Mozilla foundation existed…
.
What is your “market share”…?
.
Might be I’m harsh on you here, but I think I noticed a negative undertone (sarcasm/irony) underneath your comment…

By: tarunbk

tarunbk — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:49:14 +0000

Innovation = Opera, Chrome, Firefox
Business + Monopoly Iron Stick = Microsoft – The admittedly nightmare browser despite its performance, security issues accounts for nearly 80% marketshare..

By: nataxia

nataxia — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:58:27 +0000

I wonder why after 15 years Opera has no market share.

By: ialexi

ialexi — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:16:17 +0000

They implemented this with DIVs? That’s completely tomorrow’s technology! It should have been tables all the way!