Opera 8 Surpasses 2 Million Downloads

It may have a long way to go to meet Firefox's 50 million download mark, but Opera Software is touting the success of version 8 of its Opera Web browser, which has surpassed 2 million downloads since its launch two weeks ago. The number represents total downloads across all platforms and languages.

Although download numbers do not necessarily represent actual users, companies have increasingly begun to look to such tallies in order to gauge the success of a product launch. Microsoft has also used the amount of downloads to represent user adoption of Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Mozilla's Firefox browser became a media darling while boasting about skyrocketing download numbers. However, statistics gathered by research firms place Firefox's actual usage well below 10 percent, indicating same-user upgrades accounted for a share of the downloads.

Still, Opera is pleased with the result, saying version 8 was "welcomed by Internet users worldwide." The English language release accounted for 1.3 million downloads, while the German version was downloaded nearly 400,000 times, the company said.

"Considering Opera's last version, Opera 7, accumulated more than 60 million downloads, the successful launch of Opera 8 in April 2005 reflects that even higher download figures await for Opera," said Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner in a statement.