In an interesting move, the Opera Internet Browser is now available for free. When I say free, it already was available for free in ad supported form - now those ads are gone. These next few months should prove interesting; Internet Explorer 7’s on the way, while a major new revision of Firefox is too. Perhaps most interesting will be what’ll happen to market share; Firefox grew at IE’s expense, not seeming to have any impact on Opera, will the same hold true now that Opera is also free? Or will it be a case of Firefox diminishing with little change for IE’s share.
Also of interest is that Opera is moving towards a more simplified User Interface for version 9.
Funnily enough, these are moves which Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler has been commenting Opera should do for some time - Make it free, make it simple.