Go Opera! Go! How would one buy a computer in East Europe? You go to some PC shop (the vast majority of them were not in a chain of shops, just one guy sellin

Go Opera! Go! How would one buy a computer in East Europe? You go to some PC shop (the vast majority of them were not in a chain of shops, just one guy selling PCs in one area and that's it). You barely had enough money for the machine so nobody was buying software. Anyway, the shop owner (a technical person) knew that it can't work unless he installs some OS. So Windows was installed for free. They could also install some other software for a small fee (the fee was for the work to install it and not for software), or you could buy CDs with software. When they installed software they would usually install the best there was (because anyway, nobody was paying for it so why not?). That meant best software in the category and the latest version of that software. For browsers that meant Opera. How did you fix the PC? You just get you technical friend to do it or the shop owner that sold you the PC. When these people would see that you still use IE they would (start to cry and) immediately install what they used: Opera. So Opera adoption was driven by technical people installing, repairing PCs. Why it's not so popular elsewhere? Marketing. MS was telling you how to get on the internet in ads. Firefox was fighting a big monster in articles. I don't recall seeing either for Opera at the time.