In other words they gave up.... Netscape had a really good go at it.. then everyone hailed Opera as the one to take on IE and now Firefox.. But now it would seem firefox is more unsecure than IE and its only saving grace is that hackers prefer to attack MS products.
Opera is good but If you want an alternative then use Firefox IMHO.. But just dont get carried away (like a certain owner of accyweb does about it hehe no names roy.. no names
)... it will NEVER make more than a slight dent in the browser wars until the monopoly of IE being the only installed browser is broken... until then Firefox or any other browser no matter how fantastic a few percent think it is will never get anywhere..
BTW .. at one time there was over 100 internet browsers to choose from..