&gt; I always wondered why, for the longest time, they thought competing with Chrome and Firefox was a good idea<p>Because Jon von Tetzschner was and is passionate about building a good browser, and didn&#x27;t really care that the odds were (are?) against him.<p>But when Opera is brought up, the focus is always on the Desktop browser. However, the money was always in devices - Opera has traditionally been really big on a plethora of devices.<p>Also, Opera both on desktop and mobile, has long been big in markets other than the US, especially eastern Europe.