I have to admit that I've been reading all the great comments both for and against so eloquently posted for quite some time hoping to get some idea of the direction Opera has taken. What I've discovered is that Opera is DONE for the consumer market. Really even at its hight it was around 2% of the market (yes I remember when you could tell Opera to identify itself as IE) and even if the bring back the full optimization that existed in the previous versions it's likely to be years at their current pace. So, why destroy the old opera we all loved ? My suspicion is that Opera is not a financially viable company under the old code and would be better served if it was swallowed up by a larger player that wanted their own version of a Google lite browser. We just have to face the facts that the party's over and don't forget to turn out the lights.
“Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks -- those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.” too bad Google got there first.