| Free Opera clocks 1 million downloads in two days |
Sep. 23, 2005
 Well, that didn't take long. More than 1 million people have downloaded the Opera browser in the two days since Opera announced it was dropping the ad banner and going completely free, the Oslo-based company announced Friday.
The two-day download rate doubles the previous Opera record set in April when the company released Opera 8. According to server logs, a majority of downloads came from Internet Explorer users, the company said.
One feature of Opera is a configuration setting whereby the browser identifies itself as IE, however. Many of the supposed-IE downloaders may therefore have been running earlier, or non-free, versions of Opera.
"The success of our free browser proves the world is ready for a fresh option," said Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner. "I'm most excited about the hundreds of thousands of new users who have discovered the speed, security and usability of our browser for the first time."
A key reason for Opera going free (as in beer) is the recent success of Firefox, and erosion of Internet Explorer's market share. Mozilla Inc.'s open source Firefox browser has made strong inroads against Microsoft's Internet Explorer in recent months, resulting in Redmond's browser falling below 90 percent US marketshare (and below 70 percent in Germany) earlier this year. In May, WebSideStory listed browser marketshares for the US, Germany, and Japan, as follows:
| Browser | US | Germany | Japan | | Internet Explorer | 88.86% | 69.45% | 93.92% | | Firefox | 6.75% | 22.58% | 2.79% | Non-firefox
Mozilla/Netscape | 2.23% | 3.77% | 1.26% | Other
(includes Opera) | 2.06% | 4.12% | 1.94% | | Source: WebSideStory, May 2005 |
WebSideStory began breaking out Firefox marketshare individually starting in February of this year.
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