Opera 31: Remove default Search Engines?

Go to opera://about to display your installation paths

• From [root]/profile :

Remove default_partner_content.json and copy siteprefs.json to [root]/[version]/resources

• From [root] :

Remove default_partner_content.json then rename siteprefs.json to default_partner_content.json and set it read-only

As you may know, agreements with search engine providers are an important source of income for the company.

It's a well known issue. It's driven a lot of people away!

Here's a 'hack' which involves changing the launcher in itself. It works though!

(Source: http://forums.opera.com/discussion/1848915/opera-25-remove-yahoo-from-default-search-engines/p1)

1. Hit "WINDOWS KEY" + "E" (to) open the Windows Explorer - browse to your own files or where you want the script to reside
2. Right click in that directory --> "New" --> "New text file" and name it "OperaLauncher.BAT.txt"
3. Open that file in Notepad (or preferably Notepad++ if you got that) Paste the following code to it:

@echo off & setlocal  set "OperaProgRoot=C:\Program Files (x86)\Opera"
set "OperaLauncherExe=%OperaProgRoot%\launcher.exe"  set

"GetV=%Temp%\GetV.vbs"  echo Set
objWMIService=GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\.\root\cimv2")>"%GetV%"
echo Set colFiles=objWMIService.ExecQuery ("SELECT * FROM CIM_Datafile
WHERE Name='"^&Replace(WScript.Arguments(0),"\","\\")^&"'")>>"%GetV%" 
echo For Each objFile in colFiles: WScript.Echo objFile.version:
Next>>"%GetV%"  set Version=  for /f %%i in ('cscript //nologo
"%GetV%" "%OperaLauncherExe%"') do set "Version=%%i"  if defined
Version echo %OperaLauncherExe% - Version %Version%  del "%GetV%"  IF
NOT EXIST

"%OperaProgRoot%\%Version%\resources\default_partner_content.json"
GOTO LAUNCH_OPERA  : RENAME_DPC  ren
"%OperaProgRoot%\%Version%\resources\default_partner_content.json"
"default_partner_content.json.BAK"  : LAUNCH_OPERA 
"%OperaLauncherExe%"

I then took that .bat file and assigned the Opera 'O' icon to it, and removed the original shortcut.

For Opera 36.0.2130.65 editing the %operaversion%/resources/default_partner_content.json succeed on Ubuntu and Windows.

Open the file in vim and remove lines, other than Google, from "search_engines": { constructs in that file, so it should look like the following:

{
  "version":8,
  "search_engines": {
    "location": {
      "at": {                  // a language code 
        "other": {
          "list": [
            "google_at",
            // yahoo and all others wiped there
          ],
          "speed_dial_index_list": [0]
        }
      },
      "au": {
        "other": {
          "list": [
            "google_au",
          ],
          "speed_dial_index_list": [0]

And so on in all language sections. Sorry I can not paste the whole file.

Edit this file, keep a copy and set the edited file to be read-only and/or set opera://flags/#first-run-partner-content-update to disabled.