"Google and Opera have established a valuable relationship over the years and we look forward to continued collaboration on mobile products," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera, as Opera today made Google the default search engine in its mobile Web browsers. "We're excited to extend this productive relationship and we hope that the nearly 100 million people using our mobile products will agree," he added.

With 2008 poised to be the year the mobile Web goes mainstream, von Tetzchner noted, the extension of the cooperation between Google and Opera  will to give Opera's mobile users immediate access to the quality and convenience of Google's search results

"Opera Mini's ongoing success is proof of the mobile Web's adoption by mainstream consumers," he said. "Because Opera Mini targets feature phones that have traditionally possessed limited browsing capabilities, millions of people have made the personal choice to download and install Opera Mini to their phones."

These consumers tend to use the mobile Web more frequently and actively than consumers with more static, less dynamic mobile Web browsers, von Tetzchner added.

Every month, he said, Opera Mini users browse more than 1.7 billion pages, with much of that traffic generated through the search function in the browser.