14 DAY TRIAL // Although it occupies the third place in the browser hierarchy, Opera is far behind the first two positions. Firefox, the surprise or the thorn in Microsoft's side, has all the reasons to be proud after it passed the 50 million download threshold less than a year after it was launched. As for Internet Explorer, who can count on how many systems it has been installed.
Anyway, two weeks after its release, the 2 million download quota of the Opera 8 is worth taking into consideration and Opera Software promotes the news about the browser's success on every available channel.
Although it cannot tell for sure if 2 million users have individually downloaded the eighth version of Opera, the trend of giving up Internet Explorer for other browsing solutions is more and more obvious. This trend is an explanation for Opera's success.
Until now, the English version has been downloaded 1.3 million times and the German version 400,000 times.
The previous version of the browser, Opera 7, was downloaded 60 million times. Compared to the initial success of this last release, the browser should improve its performance, and this was probably one of the reasons which determined the Opera Software leader to make exaggerated promises and bets in the first week of the browser's release.