Opera Quadruples Download Rate

CannonBallGuy

Source: http://www.w3reports.com/index.php?itemid=1084

More than three million new users have downloaded the Opera browser in the two weeks since the company launched its free browser. The average daily download rate quadruples the previous rate achieved before the release of Opera 8.5.
Opera's growth comes as consumers demand greater safety and productivity online. Opera has the strongest security track record of any browser and continuously innovates the browser experience with features such as built-in search bars, a password manager, notes and saved sessions that make surfing easier, faster and more organized.

Opera also has built-in voice capabilities and zooming features that help make the Web more accessible to users of all abilities. Download Opera at http://www.opera.com.

About Opera Software ASA Opera Software ASA is an industry leader in the development of Web browser technology targeting the desktop, smartphone, PDA, home media and vertical markets. Partners include companies such as IBM, Nokia, Sony, Motorola, Adobe, Macromedia, Symbian, Canal+ Technologies, Sony Ericsson, Kyocera, Sharp, Motorola Metroworks, MontaVista Software, BenQ, Sendo and AMD. The Opera browser has received international recognition from users, industry experts and media for being faster, smaller, safer and more standards-compliant than other browsers.

Nuvo

It's hardly supprising since many people hate using Explorer and those who aren't overly techy might think that because Firefox is open source, it might need some knowlage of stuff like compiling or whatever.
I used Mozilla suite before Firefox, then moved to FF (when it was Firebird) and now I seem to be using Opera 8 a lot as it's more stable and loads pages faster (firefox seems to crawl at times).
Most people disliked the whole adsense integration on the free version, which lead to many of them using other browsers like those by Mozilla (Mosaic Killer, so named because Mosaic was the origional browser, but later became netscape who's source Mozilla is based on).