Opera Adds Ask.com Search to Web Browser

Opera Software on Thursday announced that it has added Ask.com to its available search engine options in its eponymous Web browser, Opera. The new version, 9.51, is available for immediate download.

Opera is available for Mac, Windows, mobile phones and other devices. The company claims its cross-platform Web browser technology performs quickly, is standards-compliant and occupies a small memory footprint. New features in the 9.5 release include an updated browser engine, a "Quick Find" feature that remembers the titles, addresses and content of Web pages you visit and more.

Like Safari and other browsers, Opera features built-in Web search capabilities, but doesn't limit itself to Google--users can select Amazon.com, Yahoo, Wikipedia and other popular sites as well. Now, the browser supports integrated search with Ask.com, which weights its search results with subject-search popularity ratings -- a method that its developers say provides more effective relevance to searches than can be accomplished with other search engines.