Re: figures
Opera makes money from selling its embedded browser and proxy solutions to OEMs.
Presto was killed because Opera couldn't keep up with the pace of development. As a long-time user of Opera I wasn't happy with the decision but I could understand it. Given the small size of the company it's making a reasonable profit, though how much of that is from software sales and how much is from search engine referrals is unknown.
What I couldn't understand was some of the decisions taken when they launched the Blink-based browser: no bookmark manager and lots of fluff like "Discover". It's still my main browser and I'm dependent upon the mail client but I'm closely following Vivaldi which is being developed in the spirit of the old Opera. It's far from perfect – somehow keeps forgetting the extensions I install – but the intention is clear: create a browser for power users. The intended market for the blink-based Opera is still unclear, to me at least.
More recently: Opera closed all development in Oslo. Some ex-Opera developers are now working on Vivaldi which bodes well for it, I hope.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
