Years ago, Opera was seen as a great alternative to Internet Explorer for browser users thanks to its lightweight design and impressive optimisation for people who were still using dial-up connections, making the net appear much faster. Opera is now up to version 10 and is still a member of the browser race, but in recent years has lost some its grip on the search engine market.
That hasn’t stopped Microsoft making a deal with its long term rival to include Bing as one of the options for the default search engine in the browser. It’s surprising that this deal has taken place, considering it was Opera’s EU complaint that launched lengthy legal talks that eventually ended in Microsoft having to give users a “choice” of browser for their Windows operating system, rather than assuming they wanted to use Internet Explorer.
Bing now features as the second search engine in Opera’s drop down list when users click on the search tool, placing it above Yahoo! but below Google in the menu system.
Opera hasn’t made much of a fuss about this new “feature” in its own marketing material. Bing should be available from the 10.60 beta and onwards. General Manager of the company, Jon Tinter welcomed the addition:
“It’s great to see Bing as a choice within another of the major browser products out there, and we hope all you Opera fans out there will go get the beta and give Bing a try.”
Opera has seen its usage double in some countries in Europe now that users have a choice of browser, announcing that overall downloads of the browser had doubled in March. In Poland, that increase was even higher, with downloads of the 10.5 edition of the browser increasing by a massive 328%.
Does this mean we’ll see Bing turning up on other browsers? Well, it’s already available on Apple’s Safari browser and can even be set up quite easily using Chrome. It’s pretty unlikely we’ll be seeing Firefox getting into bed with Microsoft over Bing any time soon though!
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