Opera Software makes Opera Browser FREE (of sponsor ads)

This is probably the most important story of the day or perhaps the month. It has the potential to massively shake the browser market by making it a three-way war. Mozilla Firefox has already started gain on Internet Explorer by increasing its share in the browser market and now Opera would have a chance at it too.

Opera browser by estimates currently has around 2-3% market share and this should increase now that they have a browser version, which is very free. Free of ads that is… considering it has been free since a long time now. Now, users no longer have to pay to get the ads removed and they can get official support by paying for it. Of course, Mozilla Firefox also requires payment for official support.

The news helped Opera improve its share value in the market by as much as 8%. The company says that since the desktop version does not form a major part of their revenue stream so they could afford to take this step. The company would now make money from the searches user conduct from the browser and other partner programs.

Opera Software said in a statement: “However, revenue in the long term is expected to increase as the ad-free browser is expected to significantly expand Opera’s market share and the contract with Google provides more search revenue per user”. The company expects that more users would mean a wider scope of earning from referral searches leading to more revenues.

The company now expects to triple its user base, which currently stands at an approximate 20 million users. There are many users out there who disliked the ads in the browser and hence moved on to Mozilla Firefox and other browsers. They would be the first one to move back as per company’s expectations. The company has been one of the most innovative ones in the market when it comes to adding value to its browser, which comes bundled with an incredible mail client, newsgroup support, RSS aggregator, and IRC support.

They are currently testing Bittorrent support, which should make an entry into the stable version release in the near future. And Opera says that the upcoming Merlin edition would bring a lot more features to the browser when it comes to support for web standards. As per a report on OperaWatch, Opera now hopes to become the second most used web browser in the market. Considering, Internet Explorer comes integrated into the Windows operating system that is quite a possible task to achieve. Mozilla Foundation now has more than just Internet Explorer to beat!

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