Opera is FREE

As I had mentioned in my article 3 days ago,Opera became free from today.No more ads.As expected premium support won’t be available for the free version.If you want premium support then you need to register your browser for 29$.This would entitle you to recieve premium support for 1 year.If you want you can still buy Opera from here
I think this is a smart decision as it would increase the popularity of Opera manifolds.Many people would be wondering how would Opera be able to fund itself.It is well known that Mobile market is a major source of revenue for Opera.As far as I can see there are several other sources of revenue too.Some of them are
a)The search bar.Everytime someone searches in Google using Opera’s search toolbar Opera makes money.Recently they have revised their contract with Google.The extended contract with Google
includes a search revenue deal, marketing support and
technical cooperation. Opera expects this contract to
increase the revenue per user.
b) Opera is reselling slipstream.
c) You can still buy Opera for 29$ in order to get premium support.
d) I believe recently they have entered into a partnership with about.com.This may be a source of some revenue too.
e) The already have an partnership with Adobe.

During the first half of 2005, 30% of Opera`s desktop
revenue was generated by selling advertising displayed in the integrated ad banner, 25% by licensing sales and 45% by Google search and other affiliate partners. Users have had the option of removing the ad banner and receiving support for a fee of US$39.

Also people who have purchased Opera less than 30 days ago would probably get a refund.

Opera v8.50 has also been released.You can view the changelog here.The major changes in the browser itself are

• Security issue in Secunia Advisory 16645 has been fixed.

• Browser Javascript is now enabled by default

Also Opera has made a noticable improvement in ACID2 test.This version of Opera identifies itself as IE by default.Opera employee Tarquin commented on this matter that

As we demonstrated with the 8.10 preview, we are evaluating the possibility of a change to IDing as Opera by default. Obviously, we must do that without breaking Web sites for our users. We have a few methods at our disposal, mainly ua.ini and browserjs.
Obviously we have a lot of pride in our products, and we want to ID as ourselves, but doing so will break a few sites. We must make sure we have a solution to these problems before we can change to IDing as Opera by default, so that our users get a seamless experience.

Opera is probably going to identify itself as Opera in Merlin.

Opera is available for download here
Learn why Opera became free
Read Opera Software’s announcement on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
http://www.opera.com