Yes you're write. Opera is history in its present form...even the browser for mobile phones must be history. Timing is everything. Not enough people wanted to go to the Opera to play according to their schedule.

such pessimism

i dont know how u think guys but this browser is the most multifunctioned one+sooo many options to customize it. i have firefox 1.6a installed on my system but i dont use it very often cause Opera is the BEST for me (:

I guess it's a matter of taste – I always found Opera had too many options (or possibly, didn't prioritize important options enough). This is just from memory, I didn't ever end up using Opera for long...

Not to say I'm completely happy with Firefox! E.g. I find it ridiculous they would change the layout of the options menu from one version to another. It always confuses me. The other major gripe of course is... I cannot find text in text boxes.

I've only ever used Opera for testing and each time I run it, it eats memory and CPU on my computer like it's the Cookie Monster eating cookies!

It has a neat zoom thing where it actually increases the size of images and flash movies as well as the text, but since I'm not visually impaired I don't really find that's a good reason enough to start using it.

Firefox and IE will do for me, but it's good to know it's now free...

That is a good argument in terms of market share, but Firefox has historically been an inferior and less innovative product. That has been hashed out in the forums if you're interested in why, but the two major points for me are that FF tends to adopt what were Opera's ideas, not vice versa, and that Opera, with all of its extensive options, is a smaller package than the barebones, extension-free FF. That, and the FF GUI looks like an IE knockoff, whereas Opera isn't afraid to step outside the box and design to create better usability...even if it scares off some of the people that were indoctrinated with MS products. My themed Opera looks more like a work of art than a browser, and has more viewable windowspace than my little-used FF copy to boot.