Don't customers come first?
Sure, but who were the customers? All those people using the browser for free? For a while Opera seemed to have cornered the embedded and mobile (low memory, low bandwidth) market. But in the meantime with things like AndroidTV, Chromecast and UC Browser have come to the market.
Along with the technical difficulties of playing catch-up with Presto, Opera wasn't making a lot of money from the browser. There were differences of opinion in the board as to the best way to run the company and as a result Jon von Tzetchner left (he's now with Vivaldi).
I, too, think they through the baby out with the bathwater with Opera 15. Using it for the first time felt very much like a slap in the face. The mobile version continues to do well, though I ditched it because I couldn't use an ad-blocker. On the desktop it's definitely lost differentiating features.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
