“Opera at that time had ~2% market share worldwide while now it sits at ~1.3%.” Opera in 2009 had 45 millions desktop users and now have more than 51 millions users. But primary for Opera is mobile market. From 50 in 2009 to more than 270 millions users.
Source: http://www.operasoftware.com/press/facts
Internet had more than 1,8 billions users in 2009 and now more than 3 billions users. It is mean that Opera have same global popularity before and after ballot screen showing in Europe with activated actualization and set IE as preferred browser.
Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
“Proves to be utterly pointless.”
Don`t forget to provide ballot and bring primary rendering via web standards and secondary rendering (compatibility) via MS standard in IE8. From IE8 Microsoft changed all other product to more opened to web standards.
This is something what Netscape tries in 1998 in USA when Microsoft was judged for tying IE to Windows. The proposed settlement in 2001 required Microsoft to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.