It's an absolute red flag what this browser does. 100% with you on this one, OP.
On every update, it reinstalls the assistant - of course, without even telling you.
Not only that, it also re-enables its privileges to autostart on windows login, EVEN IF PREVIOUSLY DISABLED.
This is next-level intrusion. This browser used to be nice. Now it's getting insanely bloated and comes with free spyware.
I'll try that standalone install posted above. I wonder if updating it causes the assistant to install as well. And I'm not really sure on how to make it the default one.
If I fail, both Vivaldi and Brave are already installed. I'm just one click away from getting rid of this trash forever and never come back, as I did with Chrome.
Utterly tired of the enshittification of things.