Spotted in my news reader within seconds of one another:
First, this Opera press release, by way of Neowin:
Opera once again wins PC World’s World Class Award for best Web browser
Opera Software today announced that for the second year running it has received PC World’s World Class 2005 award for its Opera Web browser. This accolade of excellence is based on Opera’s attractive and feature-rich Web browser product, Opera 8.
PC World selects products for this award based on exemplary design, features, performance, innovation and price. Hundreds of products were reviewed by PC World, and according to their announcement the most “revolutionary” products that “contribute to changing the world” were selected.
And sure enough, there’s Opera, listed as a World Class Award winner in the Web category (Browser subcategory) on PC World’s site.
Then, from J-Walk:
At PC World: The 100 Best Products of 2005.
When you’re buying hardware, software, and services, you want the top combination of power, features, reliability, and value. That’s what you’ll find in these World Class Award winners–starting with the Product of the Year.
And that product of the year is Mozilla Firefox.
And sure enough, there it is in the Product of the Year category (Web browser) on PC World’s Web site.
And people wonder why magazines are dying.
Update: It just gets better and better! Mysoft’s Maxthon (which is listed as a browser plug-in but is actually a full-fledged browser that builds on the IE code base) is also on the list. In fact, it’s #12, just 11 spots below Firefox and way above the #88 Opera.
If IE7 had come out a few months earlier than its scheduled release date, it would probably have made the list too.
Ed Bott 
I don’t think the PC World editors are going to be too happy about this. 🙂
When a magazine (or newspaper) has to rely on selling ads rather than selling magazines to earn revenue, you know that publication is in trouble. These “awards” are nothing more than a sad attempt at getting people to buy the magazine.
The best part of this article is the ranked list of The 100 Best Products of 2005. This list makes it easy to understand why a Canon EOS Digital Rebel (#9) is better than Google (#16), or why The New York Times on the Web (#33) is better than a Dell 3000cn color laser printer (#42), for example. Huh? Maybe this is actually the list of 100 Randomly Selected Products of 2005?
I understand that the next issue’s Top 100 list will feature the best transportation systems, boys’ names, and vegetables of 2005.