Award Claim Sparks Firefox, Opera Clash

The watchful eye of bloggers has once again stirred controversy. A press release issued by Opera Software claimed that Opera 8 won PC World's 2005 World Class Award for best Web browser only to be harshly refuted by the Mozilla Foundation's Asa Dotzler who is recognized as the Firefox and Thunderbird product manager.

The press release, which has since been corrected, prompted Dotzler to say with an acid pen, "Opera is simply lying. They were one of 100 products to be labeled as "World Class" but they did not win any "best Web browser" anything. They were last in the ranking of three web browsers. They got beat by both Maxthon and Firefox."

Dotzler also asserted browser bragging rights, stating that it was Firefox that had won the magazine's Product of the Year award. "Opera Software seems to have decided that it's easier to lie than to win," he said.

Dotzler was answered by Opera's Haavard Moen who said in his blog, "At closer inspection, it appears that Opera might not have won the best browser of 2005 award from PC World after all. Opera is listed as the only browser in the 'Web' category, which I guess got us confused. Now that we've installed fans to cool us down again, we've removed the "best browser" stuff from opera.com until PC World gets back to us to clarify things."

"So no, we are not actually evil monsters," added Moen. "We are only human."

Dotzler later wrote, with far less fervor, "There have been a lot of people accusing me of hating Opera. They're simply wrong. I don't hate the Opera browser at all. I think it's moving in the right direction and for my use (and I suspect for many power users) it's the second or third best browser available - depending on whether or not you have access to a Mac."

"If Opera can start taking significant market share away from IE, I will be cheering right along with the Opera users," Dotzler said.

Opera 8 was released in April, introducing innovative new features and security safeguards wrapped under a refreshed user interface. The release simplifies Opera's tabbed interface, has integrated power tools for advanced users that are similar to Firefox's extensions, adds native speech technology that accepts voice commands and reads Web pages aloud, and renders Web pages consistently regardless of screen size.

Although Opera 8 has received rave reviews from users, it has remained in relative obscurity while Mozilla Firefox has become a worldwide media darling, gracing the covers of numerous technology and business magazines. Firefox is nearing 65 million downloads, trumping the numbers accumulated by Opera.