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My understanding is that the money that Google forks over to Mozilla is simply to keep Google as the browser's default search engine, not to sustain Firefox as a competing browser. If Google ceased that "funding", I'm sure some other search engine would step up to the plate.

(Note: I've got no sources for this; just a cursory understanding.)

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MS has tried and will try again to pry this spot from Google for their own engine Bing.

I would bet that Google wouldn't let this happen unless Chrome superceded Firefox's market share by a very significant margin -- but then again, the asking bid price for the default search engine is probably directly proportional to Firefox's market share, so at that point, why wouldn't Google hang on to the privilege (it wouldn't cost much).

Does Opera have a default search engine?

Yes, Opera has a default search engine. In fact Opera is very good at monetizing that, they basically get all search engines to bid for it.

With much smaller market share than Firefox, Opera still makes a lot of money from the default search engine.

The money Google pays Mozilla is a split of the ad revenue. Google keeps renewing the contract because it's profitable for Google! They also don't want 25% of the web switching to use a different default search provider.

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