User agent spoofing

According to this article, the Opera web browser has been reporting itself to web sites with a user-agent that includes Internet explorer. As of the next release it appears that will be dropped by default *(although the capability of changing the user-agent will still be there.)

From what they're saying this should improve the stats for the Opera browser in stat viewers. Others, in the comments are arguing that all along it's identified itself as internet explorer, but with the name opera and the version number in the user agent. The argument is that only outdated stat viewers will be affected. Either way it's an interesting change and it relates to something that's been discussed here lately.