Opera Goes Free

At the end of August, Opera celebrated its 10th birthday by giving away free Opera v8.02 licenses to anyone who applied for one during their "birthday party."

Opera is a web browser alternative to Internet Explorer, Netscape and Firefox. Before Firefox came on the scene, Opera was #2. Now, it's trying harder...

Apparently there was quite a rush for those free licenses -- enough that Opera has now decided that the browser will be free for everyone. No longer do you have to choose between a free license with an ad banner or buying a license to remove the advertising banner. Now, Opera is free for everyone and does not have banners -- once you update to v8.5.

Quoting the site --

Why we're going free

Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera's growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today's milestone an achievable goal. Premium support is available.
Opera is working hard to gain back its market share. They recently released version 8.0 to much acclaim. The new, free Opera is version 8.5. Their web site is a LOT cleaner -- http://opera.com gives you a "feel free" message, a language selection bar (defaults to English, at least if your domain is in the US), a Free Download button, and links to Why Free, Product Features and Opera.com's real main page.

If you want to try Opera, just go to http://www.opera.com to download it. Opera coexists peacefully with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla and other browsers. I have all of these installed on my computer and, sometimes, all of them running at the same time.