A few more points:

The new Opera is based on Chromium, not Chrome. There is a lot of difference. Chromium is now the basis of all major browsers and many relatively unknown ones ... even Internet Explorer is now Chromium based.

I've used Opera from the earliest days, I've met very few others who do, if there are "regular users" I have never met any ... I'm glad to hear they exist.

Super! Annoying Google search box is gone! I agree, seems weird to hide that the checkbox to remove it.

In past versions of Opera one could change the SpeedDial page search engine. What happened to that idea?

I'm sure there are lots of people had rather see their own choice of search engines .. or none at all as compared to having Google glaring there.

I'm all for Google Free Computing! Windoze too, I use Linux Mint.

I've used Opera since 1996!