Opera Bets Big on "1-Minute Deep Research" by Baking Gemini 3 Pro into Neon

Opera is trying to reinvent the browser again, this time by baking Google’s smartest AI directly into the chrome. In a major update to its concept browser, Opera Neon, the company has integrated Google’s newly released Gemini 3 Pro model to launch a feature it calls "1-minute Deep Research." Unveiled on November 26, this integration aims to turn Opera Neon from a standard web surfer into a direct competitor for standalone AI research agents.

The move follows Google DeepMind’s November 18 release of Gemini 3 Pro, a model that Google claims offers state-of-the-art reasoning and multimodal understanding. By leveraging this architecture, Opera is attempting a fundamental shift: turning the browser from a passive window on the web into an active participant in your work.

The "1-Minute Deep Research" Mode Explained

The hook for this update is the "1-minute Deep Research" mode. Opera’s pitch is that this feature uses Gemini 3 Pro’s "Deep Think" capabilities to chew through complex queries and spit out comprehensive results in under 60 seconds.

Unlike the standard search summaries we've seen from Google and Bing—which often just scrape and aggregate text—this mode is designed for multimodal heavy lifting. Users can feed the browser text, images, audio, and video simultaneously. Crucially, the output isn't just a list of blue links; the browser attempts to generate dynamic layouts, simulations, and interactive tools tailored to whatever you asked for.

Under the hood, Gemini 3 Pro drives this speed with a massive 1 million token context window. In developer docs, Google DeepMind asserts the model shows a 30% improvement in tool use and reasoning over the previous Gemini 2.5 Pro. Opera Neon taps into this processing power to handle what Google describes as "PhD-level reasoning"—marketing speak for complex deductive tasks—effectively trying to compress hours of manual tab-opening into a single minute of processing.

Why Gemini 3 Pro Matters for Browsing

This integration represents more than just slapping a chatbot into a sidebar. The technical leap here is in the "agentic workflows," allowing Opera Neon to orchestrate multi-step tasks. In practice, this means the browser can deploy "Gemini Agents" to perform background research across multiple sources without you holding its hand, eventually organizing the findings into custom interfaces.

A key differentiator is the introduction of "thinking levels." Users can toggle between low and high reasoning modes depending on how hard the task is. For heavier lifts, the system employs "thought signatures"—a feature designed to make the AI's logic auditable. This addresses a major pain point for professional users: needing to verify that the AI isn't hallucinating its facts.

Opera calls this a shift toward "generative interfaces," where the UI adapts on-the-fly. It’s a native approach distinct from the bolted-on extension ecosystem currently cluttering Chrome or Edge.

The Catch: Privacy and Costs

While the tech is impressive, it raises immediate questions about privacy. A browser that "thinks" for you necessarily needs to see everything you are doing. While Opera has not fully detailed the data-sharing agreement, relying on Google's cloud for "Deep Research" implies that sensitive query data is leaving the local device to be processed on Google's servers. For enterprise users or privacy advocates, this data offloading could be a dealbreaker, regardless of how convenient the research mode is.

This update is part of Opera's broader strategy to expand its 650 million monthly active users, rolling out globally as of this week with a focus on Western markets. The launch coincides with Gemini 3 Pro hitting general availability in Google’s Vertex AI.

There is also the looming question of cost. With the underlying model priced at $2 per million input tokens, deep reasoning is expensive. Opera hasn't specified if "Deep Research" will eventually move behind a paywall, but the economics of processing millions of tokens for free users are challenging to sustain long-term.

Early reaction from the tech crowd has been optimistic about the utility. Testers on X have praised the "effortless" feel of the research mode for coding and multimodal tasks. But as the honeymoon phase ends, the conversation will likely shift to whether users are comfortable trading their browsing data for an AI agent that does the heavy lifting for them.