Opera 9: Differentiation

Everybody knows that it becomes more and more difficult to differentiate yourself when you are fighting in a market like the Internet browser market (previously known for its fierce browser wars). At the moment, Internet Explorer (and its upcoming IE7 version) and Firefox are the most visible options.

Opera needs something more to differentiate itself. Not that Opera is an under-powered browser (on the contrary, it has a wealth of features that Firefox only includes with additional plug-ins), but market perception is what it is: tabbed browsing, mouse movements, fast load times and better HTML/CSS compatibility are just fast becoming commodities from this market.

Opera decided to use a very bold move for its newest version 9 (immediately available for download): They included a BitTorrent P2P client in the browser.

Some will say that this is bloating the product with a useless feature. Some P2P users will appreciate it, but wonder at why a browser should contain a BT client. Some P2P users will merely appreciate the move.

In any case, I recommend using the Opera 9 web browser. It’s a very good browser (I tested the beta version at length). Even if P2P and BitTorrent support is not your priority, I think it should be on your PC instead of Internet Explorer. You will appreciate the change.

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