I upgraded Opera (it told me to) a few weeks ago. I don’t use it often – I just keep it around for testing, and as ‘another’ browser. It’s also configured with a lot of things turned off, so it’s useful for browsing to sites I don’t like the look of.
Post update, it decided to redirect me to google.nl all the time. No idea why, as it had been working fine previously. Checking every option I could within Opera, I could find no reason why.
The answer, lies in a config file, which lives here: (I’m on Windows 7, so yours may vary slightly)
C:\Users\<Your Username>\AppData\Roaming\Opera\Opera\operaprefs.ini
Towards the end of the UserPrefs section, is this line:
Google TLD Default=.google.nl
That was the one! I changed it to .co.uk, restarted Opera, et voila, it now goes where it’s meant to. I can only assume it’s something the installer did. My system is set to UK everything (I checked) and I’ve never had anything else go whizzing off to google.nl. Even going to google.com redirected properly.
Very odd!