Opera Now Free -- Perhaps acknowledging the difficulty of selling a Web browser in today's Internet, Opera has freed its Web browser. While you can still choose to pay for Opera 8.5, which also features chat, contact, email, and other related features, that fee now covers support, not the software.

<http://opera.com/>

Opera is offering one year of 24-hour-turnaround email support for $29; otherwise, the browser is free. Opera's browser is a bit quirky in how it renders CSS and handles JavaScript, but some folks swear by its fast rendering and certain subtle features. The company has increasingly moved into mobile and embedded browser development, in which revenue comes from licensees who pay a per phone, per customer, or per copy of software sold license. Adobe, for instance, embedded Opera's technology into Adobe GoLive CS2 product for better previewing of pages. Discussion on TidBITS Talk also points toward Opera earning sufficient money from ads shown along with search results from Google. [GF]

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