Noticed a curious thing about browsers.

[Captain Brillo]

When changing default search engines in browsers, Vivaldi, Slimjet and Firefox allow (apparent) complete removal of any engines from the list, but in Chromium and Opera, this cannot be done. We can only change the default, or add more engines. I personally dump Google and Yahoo as useless as soon as I can.

Given the current status of privacy issues, should we be asking why this is so? Or am I too suspicious?

[manyroads]

What is your concern?

[Captain Brillo]

Not really a concern, just curiosity as to why this is?
Vivaldi and Slimjet are are chromium browsers, so it can't be a requirement.
And when there's no apparent reason for why I can't do something I can do elsewhere, my curiosity gets itchy.

[richb]

That is curious about Chromium. In Google Chrome you can remove search engines from the list.
EDIT: Installed Chromium Version 71.0.3578.80 with MXPI and was able to remove search engines.

[Captain Brillo]

Good stuff - I'll use that. I use different browsers for different things - that will give me 4 - and I use "Canvas Defender" to hopefully confuse "fingerprinting."

But I get weird when I can't get rid of GAFA stuff.

[Moltke]

I remember this article I read once about "security on the Internet" or something like that, whose author wisely stated: "If people are concerned about their security over the Internet, then they should reasonably consider not to use it at all" I've kept those words for myself ever after since

[Captain Brillo]

Beauties!

That's why I do my best to lock the sucker down.
Ad-blocker, script blockers, firewall, VPN, screw-up-fingerprinting-stuff....

If I ever do anything bad, they going to have to work their asses off to get to me

[manyroads]

If I ever do anything bad, they going to have to work their asses off to get to me

Ah but that it were so difficult...

[Captain Brillo]

Ah but that it were so difficult...

Elucidate, please.
Any new info about privacy etc. is way welcome.
What am I missing that the NSA is still going to be able to bug me... (of course, so far, why would they...)
(The learning curve should never flatten)

[Gerson]

I no longer mess with browsers, I tried them all and chose to stay with Slimjet as the default and Vivaldi as a second option, I eliminated Firefox because of its freezes. What the search engines left to Google; I eliminated all the others; with anybody there is no privacy then ... to get stressed!