Overview and History
The history of the Opera Internet suite began in 1994 when Opera was a research project called MultiTorg Opera. The project took place at Telenor, the largest Norwegian telecommunications company. In 1995, it branched out into an independent company named Opera Software ASA.
The Opera browser was, until version 2.0, called MultiTorg Opera and was not available to the public although online documents show it at The Third International WWW Conference in 1995. It was known for its multiple document interface (MDI) and 'hotlist' (sidebar), which made browsing several pages at once much easier, as well as being the first browser to completely focus on adhering to the W3C standards.
Opera was first released publicly with version 2.0 in 1996,which only ran on Microsoft Windows. In an attempt to capitalize on the emerging market for Internet-connected handheld devices, a project to port Opera to more platforms was started in 1998. Opera 4.0, released in 2000, included a new cross-platform core that facilitated creation of editions of Opera for multiple operating systems and platforms.
Up to this point, Opera was trialware and had to be purchased after the trial period ended. But version 5.0 (released in 2000) saw the end of the trial period requirement. Instead, Opera became ad-sponsored, displaying advertisements to users who had not paid for the software. Later versions of Opera gave the user the choice of seeing banner ads or targeted text advertisements from Google. With version 8.5 (released in 2005) the advertisements were removed entirely and the browser became financially supported primarily through revenue from Google (Google is by contract Opera's default search engine).
Among the new features introduced in version 9.1 (released in 2006) was fraud protection using technology from GeoTrust, a digital certificate provider, and PhishTank, an organization that tracks known phishing web sites.
Also in 2006, editions of Opera were made and released for Nintendo's DS and Wii gaming systems. Opera for the Wii, called the Internet Channel, was free to download from its release on April 12, 2007until June 30, 2007. After June 30, Wii users had to pay 500 Wii Points to download it. The Nintendo DS Browser is likewise not free; it is sold as a physical DS game cartridge.
Info Courtesy of: http://www.wikipedia.com