Opera browser is 20 years old

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On August 20, the Norwegian company Opera Software officially celebrates the 20th anniversary of its most famous product - the Opera browser. Despite the fact that, according to the current official statistics of StatCounter, the global share of Opera hovers around 1.5%, five years ago the browser was very popular in the countries of the former USSR and its share here exceeded 30% of the audience. However, even now Opera successfully competes with Internet Explorer and Yandex Browser, although its popularity has decreased more than three times.

In addition, Opera gained fame thanks to a separate browser engine Presto, speed and functions such as Speed ​​Dial and the opening of web pages in the tabs of the program window. Later, these interface finds from the Norwegian company migrated to all other desktop browsers. True, such solutions as Opera Unite and the system of widgets Opera Widgets, which did not find support from the users and were later removed, are known. These “late decisions”, as they are called in the company, include browser control with gestures. How it could work can be viewed in the video below:


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Now Opera Software supports multiple browser versions. The most popular version is Opera Mini, which appeared in 2005, and which works even on the most simple phones on which you can run Java programs. Now this browser is used by 269 million people worldwide. And since its launch, Opera Mini has shown a truly explosive growth: if during the year of its existence the browser downloaded 1 million people, then two years after the launch, its audience was 11 million users.

Opera also releases a browser for the Android operating system and the original browser for iOS, known as Opera Coast. Given that the total audience of all versions of Opera is 350 million people, it turns out that the share of mobile (for Android and iOS) and desktop browsers accounts for 81 million users.

The fall in Opera’s popularity has to some extent affected the financial situation of the Norwegian company. So recently it became known that the leadership of Opera evaluates the possibility of selling the software division, since the company fails to meet the expectations of market experts.