As most were wondering…why could a browser like Opera just suddenly become free? Om Malik has a possible reason:

Well, little digging around, and hounding the Opera PR team, I found out that the decision to give away the browser came after the company struck “compensation deals” with some of the search engines. Apparently, the premier tenant for browser’s built-in search window, is Google. “The current most important deal now is with Google,” company spokesperson Eskil Siversten wrote in an email. The company indicated that it has similar referral-for-dollars agreements with the likes of eBay and Amazon. Given that Opera is about one percent of the total browser market, it cannot be making as much money as Mozilla folks.

Interesting. Full blog post.