For those who use Opera's excellent mobile browsers Opera Mobile and Opera Mini, there's a good news: from next month, Google will replace Yahoo as the default search engine. "With 2008 poised to be the year the mobile Web goes mainstream, Google and Opera are extending this collaboration to give our users immediate access to the quality and convenience of Google's search results," comments Opera's CEO in a press release.
Last year, when Yahoo became the default search engine in Opera's mobile products, users complained that they couldn't set Google as the default search engine. The contract with Yahoo forced users to find workarounds like bookmarking Google. "I will never use Yahoo, and being forced to do so is exactly the kind of patronizing behavior that antagonizes all those users who seriously use their mobile devices to scour the web on the go," explained one Opera Mini user.
Hopefully, Google didn't include similar conditions and users could change the default search engine to Yahoo or any other site. While criticized for the lack of support for Opera in many of its services, Google helped Opera become free and provided contextual ads in a free version of Opera.