opera continues to follow firefox's lead

A Norwegian maker of Internet browsing software hopes to imitate the success of the Firefox browser by using the same business tactic: giving the software away.

According to Boston.com, Opera's going to drop the adbar from the browser and offer a truly free version. I think it's pretty interesting the kinds of responses I got here when I suggested that Opera drop the adbar and offer the browser for free. Will those Opera users that called me a fool for suggesting that Opera give up that revenue model to try to grow market share now call Opera's leadership foolish? Probably not :-) This is a good move and I hope that Opera benefits from it. There's just no place in this market for an alternative browser that costs $40. With the mainstream browsers, IE and Firefox, both offering a free product, the niche browsers simply could not gain significant market charging users, or degrading usability, like that.