Opera wants to defeat Firefox

Sep 22, 2005 14:35 GMT  ·  By

Opera's decision to launch an ad-free version of the browser is a desperate attempt to get some market share, the Norwegian browser hoping tooutrank Firefox.

Is the Opera browser capable of such a performance? It's true Firefox is backed by the Open Source community which launches new extensions every day and by companies like IBM, but still...

Even though the latest version of Opera has been enthusiastically received by the users and it has reached a few million downloads in only a few days, the browser's market share is way behind Firefox's, not to mention Internet Explorer's.

Microsoft is already readying Internet Explorer 7.0, which could pose a threat even to Firefox. Under this circumstances, Opera doesn't stand a chance against Redmond company's marketing machinery.

The development of a free version is only the first step towards convincing some hundreds of thousands of users, but the war of the browsers will be (for now) fought only between Firefox and Internet Explorer.