14 DAY TRIAL // Jon S. von Tetzchner, the overly enthusiastic CEO of Opera Software, has promised to swim between Norway and United States if Opera 8 doesn't reach 1 million copies in four days,.
This affirmation has not been hastily made at the intervention of some journalist; on the contrary, Jon S. von Tetzchner made a press release. However, the Opera Software leader took the liberty of making a stop to Iceland, for a cup of hot chocolate with his mother. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to publish the recipe for such wonder-chocolate.
Opera's latest browser was launched Tuesday, and the extremely active response from users led to the overloading of the company's servers an hour after the publishing of the new version. After the first 48 hours, the number of those who had downloaded the application reached 600,000, and it is possible that Tetzchner made such a promise relying on this figure.
Company representatives were surprised of the success of Opera 8, the application recording a download rate of 120 per second. Because of this, the company was forced to install new servers, with superior capabilities.
By increasing the servers' capacity, Opera is trying to save its leader from the mistake/enthusiasm excess or any other appreciation you see fit to Tetzchner's promise.