Google pushes Chrome on the front page of Google.com. And they pushed Firefox for a few years before Chrome.

Also, Opera has a terrible name in comparison to the competition. Makes word of mouth less effective. That's also my theory on MySQL vs Postgres.

I'd kind of agree with you on the names. I can't even pronounce Postgres so I tend to sit quietly instead of recommending it when the topic comes up.

I'll be sure to run my next product name by you.

Just listen to this: http://twit.tv/floss18

TL;DL: It's Post-Grez-Que-Ell

Google also advertises Chrome in the Real World - e.g. several London tube stations are plastered with Chrome ads. I've not seen anything that high profile for Opera.

Lots of little reasons probably. Didn't Opera have those built-in toolbar banner advertisements for a long time? That probably didn't help. I agree the naming has always been a problem. Not that Firefox, Chrome or Safari are more descriptive names but they at least do not associate themselves with an art form that is generally considered to be lame or elitist. (not sure I agree but that's the perception in the US at least) Then again, to this day, a lot of people seem to think it's actually pronounced Oprah which is probably equally confusing but less negative to most people.

I tried Opera once a long time ago and it had ads in the browser. I became a firefox user and never looked back. Subsequently, firefox was the browser I'd recommend, etc..

It's interesting how that one experience completely changed your perception of Opera even now. Definitely applicable to startup life - don't take the easy monetization, it may come back to haunt you.

To be clear, I have no opinion about Opera now. My negative opinion expired a long time ago. Opera is merely one of the "browsers I don't use" in the same category as Konqueror, Safari, and Epiphany.

What it did was lose me at the only point it ever mattered for a product with a long life. Firefox has satisfied my needs since, and I've never had the will to evaluate Opera again.

I agree. I think that there are all kinds of lessons to be learned from the Opera experiment, which is why I asked the question.

I think Opera has historically focused on features that power users find interesting, maybe because most of their user-base is power users. But that has negative implications for mainstream adoption.

I disagree. Opera was also the browser than could fit on a 1.44mb floppy, it was always had the smallest footprint of browsers, as well as memory. The problem was the in the wild west of the web, a lot of pages didn't work quite right on Opera. So you always had to have IE or Netscape handy.

> it was always had the smallest footprint of browsers, as well as memory

So . . . features for power users, right?

> didn't work quite right on Opera

Sounds like something power users put up with more readily than most other people.

> have IE or Netscape handy.

Using more than one browser is something power users do.

>So you always had to have IE or Netscape handy.

That's a very interesting point. I guess when Opera first came out, it didn't quite work right, IE and Netscape were the 800 pound gorillas fighting it out, and Firefox simply inherited the mindshare of Netscape. Opera was simply a third dancer in a waltz.