Of course, this is not a coincidence. Someone was desperate enough to spend all of his mod points modding down five of my old comments about Opera. Imagine that!

I am not sure if I should be flattered by this undivided attention by someone who finds my "unpleasant" comments so terrible that he needs to mod them down, or if I should be worried that I apparently have a stalker.

One thing's for sure, though. It didn't affect my karma, and this is not going to silence me at all. I could report this incidence to the Slashdot staff, but somehow, I get the feeling they wouldn't be all too worried about pro-Opera comments being modded down... :)

The comments in question:

• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=132312&cid=11058327
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=132110&cid=11049719
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=132110&cid=11040293
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=132110&cid=11040269
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=132110&cid=11040256

The Slashdot spin on the story is that Opera is in trouble, and losing money. And, the author says, this could be caused by Firefox.

However, this is just yet another example of anti-Opera FUD on Slashdot. The facts, when you actually take the time to check them, paints a different picture than the story and comments by many users on Slashdot.

First of all, let's have a look at the actual numbers. Let's compare Q3 of 2003 and 2004 on the PC, straight from the source:

• Q3, 2003: 8 668
• Q3, 2004: 9 446

So, Opera's revenue from the PC market, where it is in competition with free browsers like Firefox, which it has been for nearly ten years, actually went up in Q3 this year compared to last year! Now, how can anyone make this out to mean that Firefox is hurting Opera? It doesn't make sense.

But wait, there's more. Even if Firefox did cause losses on PC desktops, that wouldn't be a big problem for Opera, because:

1. Opera is free of debt, has millions in the bank, and could take losses for several years
2. Opera's main source of income is the mobile/embedded market, and Firefox is completely irrelevant there. Firefox is a PC browser, not a mobile browser

Yes, I know about Minimo, but that doesn't change the facts today, and Minimo has yet to prove itself.

In conclusion: This is pure FUD and misinformation from Slashdot, and people, as usual, didn't take the time to actually read the article (they didn't even bother to read one of the first comments, which partially explained it all. That means that they failed to get this piece of vital information about the losses:

Opera had a tiny loss in Q3, 2004 because they had to expand in order to be able to cover the demand for the product, and thereby making even more money in the future.