You remember that famous ad banner in Opera Browser that probably was the biggest catch on the way to increase number of Opera users, don’t you? On September 20, 2005, with official appearance of version 8.50, Opera Browser started to be a freewarelicensed program. Don’t you want to find out why Opera Software, a Norwegian company currently listed in the stock exchange, concurrently providing a job for 400 of workers, turned Opera into freeware licensed web browser with no ads? Ok, let me paint a picture.
There is a simple question - if Opera Software doesn’t have any ads in its browser, how do they make money? On other paid stuff, like Opera Mobile charged for 24 USD per copy? Well, not at all - nowadays in this business everything depends on smart business deals. You can say “I know, there was a deal with Nintendo, I have heard about that one!”. Look - freeware version of Opera Browser is still a good source of money for Opera Software. I just want to clarify how the thing works, everything is about a smart affiliate deal with Google, and other parter companies.
Definitely the best source of Opera Software’s earnings are ads. You say ‘Hey, wait a minute. Every newer version of Opera doesn’t have any ad banner, so what are you talking about?!’. Think about that deal with Google, mentioned above. Every time when Opera user does a search with a small search field placed near browser’s address bar, Google shows sponsored links on search results pages. When user clicks, Opera Software makes money on it. It’s quite simple, isn’t it? Now let’s estimate the earnings. We can do it because we have got to know how much Mozilla has already made on Firefox, and have the data of actual browsers popularity. Depending on 2005, statics of popularity showed that Mozilla was having something about 20% share in web browser industry, and Firefox made $52,900,000. Current Opera Browser share is something about 1,5%. So iou see, I think we can say that Opera Software has made at least something about 4 million dollars last year just on that deal with Google alone. Check your search bar, you’ll find there are also other partners.
Deals with Amazon.com, eBay, Answer.com, PriceRunner… Affiliate stuff is placed everywhere in it. Think about it as the world’s best example of affiliate marketing. What a great noninvasive way of advertising 
April 15th, 2007 #
Just a point of correction: Opera 8.50 came out on September 20, 2005, not April 20, 2006. (Here’s the press release.) So it’s been just over 1½ years since Opera went all-free.
April 15th, 2007 #
Thx Kelson, date has been corrected. I’ve got correct one from Wikipedia, and I have no idea how that bug went to my post,
July 25th, 2007 #
Yes, I remember that banner, also remember, to my shame, those secret hack codes
which pulled it off. Then I recall as I spent a few bucks 3 years ago, when there was a special discount for Polish users 
but Opera is always installed in my PC.
Finally I remember affiliate program (unfortunately I had too few clicks), and at last Opera became free.
Thats all my history concernig Opera browser. Now I’m using FF mostly
July 26th, 2007 #
Thanks for a nice story Tomek, I haven’t known about $$$ Opera affiliate program and evil ways to make the baner go away mentioned in your comment. I had been interested only in one sort of computer software - games.
January 28th, 2008 #
[...] even remove it form the toolbar BUT folks from Mozilla actually make good money on affiliate links they have included in it, so there’s no simple way to get rid of that thing. And these two plugins allow you to post [...]