Now almost all of us know ad-free Opera Browser is free for download. In case you don’t, go read the post via the link.

After the stunning announcement, Opera reached 1 Million downloads in 2 days !! The record doubles the previous highest download in April when Opera Software released Opera 8. Opera was even curious enough to track who were the downloaders too, who else? Internet Explorer users, they were.

Quoted:
According to server logs, a majority of downloads came from Internet Explorer users.

A rough figure shows the annual income from selling Opera is around USD$3.9 Million. So, you might wonder, why all of a sudden Opera Software had such a thought of turning one of their money-making products into a freeware? Well, there is definitely a story behind it.


If you noticed, Google is now the official main search engine integrated in Opera browser. In fact, Google was the one handed the “compensation deals” to Opera Software, in order to be the main built-in search engine. So, with the money supplied from the giant search engine company, Opera is now free.

Besides, a similar “compensation deals” was also been given to Mozilla Foundation by Google, for the integration of Google Search into Mozilla Firefox too. The deal was around USD$30 Million a year !! Well, with such an amount of money, I have no doubt why Opera browser is now free.