Opera To Go Free?

from the that-would-be-cool dept

People are speculating that Opera is finally going to release a free version of their browser next week. It's about time. I've always liked Opera, but never enough to actually pay for it. I could never figure out how they expected to build up a business based on having people pay for a product everyone else was giving away for free.
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  • identicon
    Ryan, 1 Dec 2000 @ 5:25pm

    Chewin' on crud

    It really doesn't make sense! We already know who won the browser wars, it's sort of like handing out rotted food (no one needs it or really wants it and of course it's past its sell by date). Woof!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 1 Dec 2000 @ 6:00pm

      Re: Chewin' on crud

      Hey, what didn't make sense was them continuing to charge for it. It is a pretty damn good browser. If it really does go free, I'll definitely use it, and if I like it, I'd consider making it my default.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Ryan, 2 Dec 2000 @ 8:28am

        Re: Chewin' on crud

        Yeah, it might be good but the majority of people aren't going to use it and opera will probably find it almost impossible to make money off of it. Unless there planning on doing something innovative with the browser business model (or they want to get their company name out there) there really isn't any point in giving out free software, I mean paying to give out software (I forgot about bandwidth and hosting costs).

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Keith G., 1 Dec 2000 @ 8:11pm

    Opera for 'free'

    When I first saw this, I checked the general discussion list on Opera's web site. Under this topic there was a reference to a Danish article that states the "free" Opera 5.0 will be ad-supported. Yuck.
    As a registered user of Opera, I sure hope that the new feature list of version 5.0 (over the current 4.02) consists of a lot more than just an ad support system.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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