Opera takes the Free way.

Opera made the big bold move this week by offering their $29PHP 1,702INR 2,458EUR 28CNY 211-dollar browser (version 8.5) for free. As of today, there are about 1.6 Million downloads already.

It was a bit of a surprise why Opera would take the free model, but it was high time I guess. There have been reports that Opera had made a deal with Google and other big sites (like Amazon I guess) for delivering ads which is set to replace their $30PHP 1,761INR 2,542EUR 29CNY 218 Million revenue from selling the browsers. Yup, they do have buyers — 100,000 shelling out $30PHP 1,761INR 2,542EUR 29CNY 218 annually. Not much but it’s still something.

This move could have been triggered by recent stats that FireFox is eating away Opera’s piece of the pie.

With this shift, Opera is expected (or hopes?) to earn more from what they get by selling the ad-free browser. If Mozilla can do it, why can’t they?