Opera is looking to mobilise its existing community of users in order to overtake Firefox as the number two browser on the desktop. Last week, Opera decided to give away an ad-free version of its browser for the first time. Jon von Tetzchner, chief exec of Opera Software, said that by removing the inclusion of banner ads from the free version of its browser the company had removed the biggest reason users might have for avoiding its software. The Norwegian software developer claims 2.4m downloads of the ad-free version of the browser since 20 September, when Opera made the big move. von Tetzchner disputes figures from web analytics firms which put Opera's browser market share down at around 2-3 per cent or lower while Firefox has a market share of around 8.8 per cent. These figures can be misleading because users can change Opera to present itself as Internet Explorer to gain access to sites that fail to follow web standards. Opera's market share stands at around five per cent in many countries such as Norway, Germany, Russia and Japan, according to von Tetzchner, who said the goal of the firm is to reach double digits in as many places of the world as possible. "We have to be patient and we won't reach 10 per cent before the end of the year, but we might do it before the end of next year," he said. Opera already has between 10-15m active users, he added. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/30/opera_strategy/