You wrote: "People used Opera because other people used Opera".
I am originally from Russia and my wife is from Belarus, and I can tell you that's very common in former Soviet Republics. They just pick a software package and stay with it, e.g. Norton Commander/FAR Manager instead of command line or built-in OS file managers, RAR instead of Zip etc etc. I believe this mainly has to do with user mentality than the qualities of the product itself.
That's true in any country, and in any industry. Momentum is hugely important, and us hacker types tend to forget that. While we love to try new things out and always ready to switch, most people are content with the things they use, the things they regularly buy, and will only switch if social pressure compels them to.
Social pressure, exactly. And in countries like Russia, it's much harder to manipulate it. They love their Livejournal and vk.ru, and their Nokia phones (sometimes to a fault - Nokia is closing all stores in Russia), and they don't use Google or Facebook. Google tried and failed, now FB is trying. And Zuckerberg won't be able to solve this one, without some M&A.
Norton Commander was awesome on MS DOS. Simple and elegant, yet powerful.
As for RAR - 95% of the time (emailing attachments), Zip would work just fine, especially on the receiving end, without forcing the recipient to install anything.
I am originally from Russia and my wife is from Belarus, and I can tell you that's very common in former Soviet Republics. They just pick a software package and stay with it, e.g. Norton Commander/FAR Manager instead of command line or built-in OS file managers, RAR instead of Zip etc etc. I believe this mainly has to do with user mentality than the qualities of the product itself.