What is Opera?

Opera is a fast and free alternative browser, made to discover.
(official statement at opera.com)

What keeps your system safe&clean from virus/malware?

Antivirus or anti-virus software (often abbreviated as AV), sometimes known as anti-malware software, is computer software used to prevent, detect and remove malicious software.
(via Wikipedia)

In what case a user's browser settings like default search engine would be hijacked?

1. You ignored or your browser / OS / antivirus software failed to notify you about a unsafe download.

2. Your antivirus software fails to warn you when a unsafe executable be launched and fails to protect your system from it.

When the antivirus software fails to protect the system, which means in that case your system would contain some malware or virus, would you really trust a browser to protect you when your system is insecure?

So you mean a browser shouldn't consider security at all?

Of course NOT. A browser could (and should) keep user safe when surfing the internet, which includes (but not limited to)

1. Suspend connection and notify user about bad certificate, to secure SSL connections
   (but still, provide user a way to access it)

2. Warn user about a known unsafe site that may contain malware
   (but still, allow user to access it anyway and prevent danger scripts to harm user's system, that's why we have sandbox in Chromium)

3. Warn user about a unsafe download, for example when it's a known malware
   (but still, if user decide to run it anyways, it's antivirus software's job to prevent system from being damaged)

And what about locking the default search engine?

When your system is insecure, locking the default search engine means nothing.

Locking the default search engine means NOTHING

(I said it twice since it's important)

The attacker could, for example, change your DNS server to attacker's without you even know it. In that case, when you're trying to access a site (let's say Google.com) it could be resolved to attacker's site. It's not hard for the attacker to add his own certificate as trusted, so in this case https can't protect you. Your connection would be still be encrypted, but not to Google's server, to attacker's server.

Is it necessary to have some protection on search engine?

Absolutely yes. But NOT like what Opera does.

Let's take a look at what Google Chrome does about search engines:

1. There are build-in search engines. But you can edit them, remove them (all) as you wish.

2. You can add your own custom search engine, and set it as default.

So how does Google Chrome prevent unwanted change to search engine?

1. A extension could add a search engine, but may not override the default settings without user knowing it.

2. A extension couldn't be installed without user knowing it.

3. A extension doesn't come from Chrome Web Store will be disabled at every startup of browser (on stable/beta channels only)

In short: Google Chrome prevents search engine settings being changed without user knowing it while using the browser.

In conclusion, a browser, should offer user a safe Internet experience, but should never try to protect user's system outside the browser - We have antivirus softwares to do that.

But... but they said it's about safety

They might be trying to do so, but it's a completely pointless, meaningless move.

1. Locate a file named "default_partner_content.json" , for example on my pc it's in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Opera\25.0.1614.50\resources"
2. We can edit this file before but unfortunately it doesn't work in the latest version (25.0.1614.50 as I typing) any more. But we can still remove all (but Google) the default search engines by rename or delete this file. Please note you need to close your Opera before you do that.
3. After you rename/delete that file and restart you opera, you'll notice that the only build-in search engine left is Google, the other four are gone. So you can go ahead and add your own Wikipedia (in the language you prefer) search engine and assign letter "w" to it
4. You can't remove Google or change the letter g or set your own search engine as default. But I think that's not your concern. This method should work, but I'm not sure for how long. They did remove the ability to manually edit the file in the latest update, there's no guarantee that they won't hard code everything into the next release. When that happens, I recommend switch to Google Chrome (or Chromium if you prefer open source) - Opera is based on Chromium anyway so you won't feel much difference, and you will be given full access to the search engines which means you can do whatever you want with the default ones, and you can set any of your custom ones as the default.

@namal23 Yes, of course.

As I said, even Google Chrome (Yes, I'm talking about the Google Chrome not Chromium) allows you to choose a search engine other than Google as default search engine, and you can do whatever you want with the default search engines, and you can add your own custom search engine and set it as default.

What we have in Opera? 5 pre-defined search engines, can't edit, can't remove (you can clear the list to only "Google" if you delete the file default_partner_content.json) and you can't set your own custom search engine as default.

Not cool guys, NOOT COOL

It's been years, every time someone comes up asking for a way to change the default search engine, you guys change the subject to "Hey, there's a number of ways to use your own search engine. What did you say you want to change the default search engine? Ok, let me teach you how to use a non-default search engine."

STOP IT

Google still have my trust so I'm okay with using Google as my default search engine, and been knowing that you can manually edit the "default_partner_content.json" file. Until today, someone asked a way to change the default search engine of Opera and I suggested to edit that file - guess what? It doesn't work anymore!

I understand that ordinary users may break things, that's quiet possible. But why prevent "power user" changing a freaking default search engine?! Come on! You even have a "Power user settings" (to someone don't know, type "UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A" in opera://settings/ , kind of cool hum, it's the Konami code :D) but even that doesn't allow you to do anything as simple as change the default search engine.

Yes, I can use any of my custom search engine by using a keyword search, but I just want to type my search query and hit the enter key because that's what I did for other browsers for years! Why are you forcing me to change my behavior?

Someone from opera team have a very funny excuse saying that limit the default search engine to five is a way to prevent malware blahblahblah... like they're the good guys.

Just face it, you take the money from the search providers and set them as the default search engine

Stop lying. If you really concern about your users, shouldn't you put up a vote like "Which five search engines would you like as defaults"? I'm not a big fan of DuckDuckGo (Like I said I myself is pretty happy with Google) but I've seen numbers of posts requesting that, why didn't it made itself into the list? I guess just because it's a community driven search engine that won't pay you to get itself into the list and you won't receive money when users use it

Want proof? Just open that "default_partner_content.json" file I mentioned, you'll see a lot non-necessary things in the search query like:

utm_source=opera
client=opera
sourceid=opera
...

this list goes on and on and on...

Listen to your users, they just want to custom their own search engine!

Hi everyone.

Just re-installed OS for my laptop and switched from Chrome to Opera 18, which IMO, acts way better in low-memory environment and still as fast as Chrome (Great job, Opera team!)

But there is several things really annoys me. The first one is this ctrl-space keyboard shortcut.
I'm a Chinese user, I use ctrl-space as keyboard shortcut to switch between IME & non-IME modes.
For some reason I don't know, my IME doesn't work in Opera's address bar. That's fine, since I don't use IME to type URL anyway (but I still do hope you can fix this. You can find the IME I'm using at http://pinyin.sogou.com/ of course it's a Chinese IME) So I have to switch to non-IME, type URL, switch back again, which is basically what I do when I need to type URL in a browser over these years.

The problem is: opera always takes me directly back to speed dial page while I finished typing URL, hit enter, then hit ctrl-space (very quick, like I said I've been doing this for years it's kind of a habit) to switch to IME mode. At first I thought I had some connection problem, then I figured out it's opera using ctrl-space as it's own keyboard shortcut.

So, I don't need this ctrl-space to speed dial shortcut anyway (I would rather just ctrl-T to open a new tab) Is there anything I can do to permanently disable this annoying shortcut?

Thanks in advance.