On: History of Web Browser Engines from 1990 until tod...

[ivlad]

It’s very hard to make money from, you know, a freeware browser without earning them somewhere else, i.e., in targeted advertising.

[hakfoo → ivlad]

Their big business idea was embedding and customization; the Wii's browser was an Opera derivative, for example.

I suspect they were an inadvertent victim of the smartphone/cheap data revolution. Products like Opera Mini (was that the one that did a lot of the lifting server side) were rapidly obsolesced when we moved from spotty data and Blackberry scroll-wheels to touchscreens and 3G/4G

[Eisenstein → ivlad]

I agree, it was a terrible business plan. I loved the browser though.