Booking.com ad in omnibar breaking basic functionality

[heinrichcorriea]

heinrichcorriea last edited by

That's is good

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

I've been an Opera user for a good 7-8 years now, switching over once Chrome and Firefox became too bloated and leaky. I really love Opera, I do, I've never stuck with a browser as long as I have Opera. Heck I love it enough to have created this account now just to plead for it not to die.

This "Feature" on top of a growing list of changes that has hindered usability is enough to make me switch browsers. Yes some users will complain and threaten to leave every time anything is changed but this sort of blatant anti-user browser hijack in all but name is on another level. Who thought this was a good idea and wouldn't lead to complaints and eventually a declining user base? I just now experience this for myself, I was already frustrated with booking.com's unwanted adware, yes I'm going to call it that, speed dial links returning randomly. How long are we going to keep calling that a "Bug"? Is this a "bug" that'll be on the to-do list to fix forever too?

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Also happens to me when I'm typing in "news". It immediately starts wanting to send me to New York listings on booking dot com, and I have to sit and wait a second or so after typing out all of "news" before it stops doing so and starts wanting to send me to what it used to always want to send me to with far less of the word typed in. This is aggravating the heck out of me, and I'm getting tired of all of the intrusive ways they're trying to shove their ad partners down my throat. Consider me on the fast track to another browser, as well.

[makoruu]

makoruu last edited by

Having poured through the settings, myself, there doesn't appear to be a way to disable it, either.

[A Former User]

A Former User @makoruu last edited by

@makoruu I went through everything, including the profile folder. They buried this deep.

[makoruu]

makoruu last edited by

I'm very close to not using this browser anymore.

[gmiazga]

gmiazga Opera last edited by

@ernie @makoruu @timedilation this was error on our side with search keywords matching and not intended behaviour. It should be fixed within an hour after client pulls data from server. I'm really sorry for this problem.

[A Former User]

A Former User @gmiazga last edited by

@mgeffro Thank you for responding. At this point i'm still seeing the Booking.com results come up. Is there a way I can "force" the pull?

[frd3]

frd3 last edited by

Same thing here, it's still there and extremely annoying. It is also "hijacking" sites like Couchsurfing. When I start typing "couch" I'm automatically redirected to booking.com...

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Still continuing. NY seems to have been fixed, Washington no, "the" no.

I don't know if this is a mistake or not but one more day and I'm going to Chrome.

[leocg]

leocg Moderator Volunteer @Guest last edited by

@rfj1862 Did you wait at least one hour after have started Opera?

[A Former User]

A Former User @Guest last edited by

Still doing it after a full day of use.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

I have the same issue. It is extremely irritating.

This was a very poor decision on the part of Opera to include this.

It must be making them good revenue, but it doesn't make me happy.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

I updated to 53.0.2907.106 several hours ago and this is still occurring. Typing in "dis" to go to discogs.com, for example, instead shows me a booking.com advertisement for "disneyland hotel", which is what is opened if I press Enter instead of the actual site in the omnibar. This has a disastrous effect on being able to rely on muscle memory while browsing.

If that wasn't the intended behavior, then I'm not really confident that the actual intended behavior is really any better. Adding sponsored links to Speed Dial was one thing, but constantly injecting ads and unwanted sponsored search terms into basic UI elements in response to user input is extremely intrusive and I'm strongly considering switching browsers because of this.

[gmiazga]

gmiazga Opera last edited by

Thanks for informations. From my limited knowledge server push should have fixed this issue. This was performed as a test and apparently it went really bad this time. We are going to keep looking into this issue further to see why it didn't work for you so far.

[gmiazga]

gmiazga Opera last edited by

Got an information that while we work on proper fix for this it should be enough to disable following settings on opera://settings page "Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar".

[sgunhouse]

sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer last edited by

Seems to be fixed now - at least, I'm not seeing it in Developer and I was yesterday.

[aquagreen]

aquagreen last edited by

It's not yet fixed in 53.0

[A Former User]

A Former User @sgunhouse last edited by

I'm not seeing it on my end now, either. Thank heavens.

[frd3]

frd3 last edited by

It seems like it's back to normal on my side too.