Opera Almost Figures It Out

Something very unusual to going on today. Opera is finally offering free registration for their browser. Problem is, it's just for today. In case anyone's interested, go to this page and submit an email address and you'll be given a registration code. Then you can download the browser, register it, and those ad banners go "poof." Thanks to Nitin for pointing this out.

This is celebration of Opera's ten-year anniversary, and I think it's a great idea. Adware sucks and everyone hates it, so most people don't even give Opera a chance. Unfortunately, the ones who do generally decide that it just ain't worth forty bucks. But we all love free stuff, so don't be surprised if Opera hits a record for new users today. Maybe it'll finally wake them up to a simple fact that's been staring them in the face for years: Netscape was crushed by Microsoft in part because they started charging for Communicator Gold. The free, stripped down Netscape browser was the most dominant piece of software the internet had yet seen, but bloating it up and slapping on a price tag neatly killed it.

As soon as Opera figures this out, the better off they'll be. I don't know what their business model is, but making the product free would push their market share back up (it's been declining for months), meaning a bigger audience, and leading to improvements in the software. Suddenly Mozilla is looking back over their shoulder, and all the browsers get better.

But this won't happen. Opera is still too pricey, and the UI is still way to cluttered and confusing. Right now, your best bet remains Firefox, but I figure if it's free and the ads are gone, I'll give Opera another shot.