Upon creating a new Vivaldi profile, I am presented with the setup wizard. But, creating a search bar is not part of the setup routine. And, the first‑run ends up with an omnibar.
My guess is that the Vivaldi team did not want to overwhelm new users or to give new users an unfamiliar experience.
Backing up a bit, Vivaldi does have a direct match feature which is enabled by default. And, the Proton VPN extension is automatically installed if you click on the large “VPN” button in the toolbar. So, Vivaldi has an audience and they’re selling advertising to that audience. But, they deserve some criticism for blurring the line between advertising and traditional features like browsing or searching.
I still have not quite figured out how to avoid example.com being turned into example.com/some-page-i-visited after their recent changes to the address bar. Aggressive autocomplete wasn’t a problem before that update. Specifically, typing example.com and pressing Enter now navigates to the first suggestion under the address bar rather than simply navigating to example.com