Who cares who had it first, it’s who has it now that concerns people. It also does not necessarily matter if a program has a feature, what matters is if the feature works well.

Opera is cluttered by default, at least (as I previously said) in my opinion. I don’t think you’ve even tried Firefox 3.0, at least if you’re thinking that Firefox is a memory hog. I’ve been updating both Firefox (my main browser) and Opera when there is an update, and I can’t find too much different in the speeds, at least for general browsing. But if you’re worried about your precious RAM being used up, I’ve got news for you. I opened both of the current versions of the browsers (Firefox - 3.0.1 ; Opera - 9.51 ) and even with the add-ons I’m using with Firefox, Opera was using more RAM than Firefox.

Not to be picky either, but the spellchecker in Opera must not work nearly as well as the standard one in Firefox. You’ve got a few errors in your three sentences.

You say Opera is cluttered, it has far more plugins by default, is still smaller in memory and folder size, and is still better in speed, compliance, future stuff, etc. It has deccent plugins by default, whereas FF sticks the massive voice in for everyone.