I guess they realized people would pay for garbage when garbage is generally something found free elsewhere. Not particularly calling Opera garbage, although I haven't used it in years and recall it not being all that good when I did try it, but, they probably didn't see a lot of legit users when cracks were readily available to remove the ads from the free version without having to pay for the license.
http://news.com.com/Opera+nixes+bann...4093&subj=news