But not one browser will allow extensions. In none can I strip google's oppressive, googlized tracking URL search results - no addons. I can even do that in Chrome. So many other privacy fixes can't be used because you still don't support addons. Not even in a limited way.

I'm an IT engineer of 20-plus years working exclusively on internet code and applications since 1996. Don't you dare try to give me what is a dishonestly incomplete statement about security risks with add-ons. Yes, they can be a security risk, if you allow anyone to load anything up on your add-ons repository like Google Chrome practically does. But that's not the only way to do it, is it?

Your ad blocker is useful. But for that to be the only real privacy function allowed leaves Opera woefully insufficient, and either delusionally or dishonestly boastful about your privacy focus. Yes, the Opera VPN - blah, blah. But anyone with privacy concerns already has a VPN in place. Yours is competent, but no more.

Oh, and no, I am not an extension or addon developer. The only way add-ons would benefit me financially is to prevent someone from hacking my banking information.

Why so many versions, yet all near unusable because of lack of add-ons?
Why so many dijointed features? 'Flow' is a useful feature. Why [caps are not allowed] Opera Touch to make use of it? Why isn't it incorporated into the core of browser products? Why devote resources to so many disjointed and conflicting project lines???

Why am I so annoyed? Because you have the best core browser. Year after year I try to use it. I want to use it. And, year after year, I have to [caps are not allowes and then [caps are not allowed] desktop machines because you still haven't addressed recent issues and can't provide the agility of response to need that add-ons can provide.

Don't point to Chrome's announced, yet already backed-off plan to remove add-ons. It took them only days to understand how a full browser application is entirely too complex and release cycle too slow to to have the necessary dexterity to respond quickly to changing security concerns. To realize that the core is too complex to quickly keep up with privacy needs, and that these can only be responsively addressed through the quick development cycle and focused expertise of add-ons.

Opera may as well be dead. Abandoned, but hopefully the core browser shelved until it can be picked-up again by project leadership who can see something other than their own well intentioned, but arrogant and poorly informed biases. Because despite all the privacy rhetoric, it will remain a beautiful, strong castle standing alone in an open field, completely unprotected and exposed without the security an outer curtain wall provides.