Why is Opera not worldwide popular?

Translator's note: Trying to find the answer to the question “Why is Opera not popular in the USA and Europe?”, I came across a very interesting article . In my opinion, the reasons mentioned in the article are quite reasonable. Therefore, I decided to translate for Habr part of this article devoted specifically to this issue.

Of course, Opera has its drawbacks, but in the end, this is a great browser and it is one of the most popular browsers in some countries, such as Russia and Ukraine. Nevertheless, it has a scanty share of the global market - about 2%, and we don’t see many web developers ready to optimize their web applications and web sites with Opera in mind (note the translator: here you can, for example, remember how Google didn't want to do this for Google Apps for a long time) . What are the reasons for this?

I have the following guesses:

• Bad advertising.
  IE is installed by default in Windows, Safari on Mac, Firefox and Chromium are installed by default on some GNU / Linux distributions. In addition, we see IE9 banners everywhere, Chrome banners, and (now rarely) Firefox banners with the Google Toolbar. I almost never saw Opera banners. Is this due to poor financing or a bad marketing strategy? I don’t know, but I’m sure that it would be much better for Opera if they focused on the task of “becoming a more famous browser.”
• Outdated impression.
  Partly because of the above reason, and partly because of her age, Opera seems to have left a not-so-good impression on many users. Some of these users used Opera in the past, when it was not as polished and licked as it is today, and continue to think that the browser has not changed. For example, I myself learned that Opera became free only about a year ago.
  A radical decision could be a complete rebranding of the browser. Although I am absolutely not sure of the consequences.
• Strange names of subsystems.
  Opera has a habit of giving functional subsystems their own names. In the beginning Opera users often ask: “What the hell is Opera Link / Unite / Turbo / Dragonfly / etc.?”. By confusing users with obscure names, Opera creates a bad impression. In my opinion, it is better to simply call them Sync / Share / Accelerator / Developer Tools, respectively. All of them are part of the browser, not individual products, so there is hardly an objective reason to give each subsystem a strange name.
• Versatility vs simplicity.
  Today's web "revolves" around efficiency. Most of the time, simplicity boosts efficiency. The difficulty does not. Google Chrome takes this very well into account: it does not have an email client, an accelerator, a mechanism for exchanging data between users and a subscription to RSS, but what it has is implemented correctly. And Opera, it seems, cannot make the right choice between rich default functionality and simplicity.
  You can easily verify this by looking at the Opera context menu. There is a “Back”, “Forward”, “Refresh” and this is good. But there is also a “Return” and “Quick Go”, and even “Update every X seconds.” It is impossible to deny that these menu items can be useful to someone from time to time, but how often do most users need them? About never.
  The context menu becomes very long because of these additional options ... Yes, they make Opera more powerful, but at the same time frequently used features like Search are harder to find and it takes ordinary users more time than they should.

Conclusion
Opera is an innovative and powerful browser, though not without flaws. If the above problems are resolved, I am sure that a bright future awaits her. As for the current moment - am I ready to switch from Chrome to Opera? The answer is no. Until Opera changes a bit more, Chrome will better serve my needs. It is important to understand that the browser, as a concept, is becoming an increasingly universal platform for applications, a simple unobtrusive basis, and not a complex set of all-in-one applications. In this aspect, Opera has big problems and it still has a long way to go. Next, Opera!