Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
| From: | Rick Spencer <rick.spencer-Z7WLFzj8eWMS+FvcfC7Uqw-AT-public.gmane.org> | |
| To: | ubuntu-devel-nLRlyDuq1AZFpShjVBNYrg-AT-public.gmane.org, Ubuntu Desktop List <ubuntu-desktop-nLRlyDuq1AZFpShjVBNYrg-AT-public.gmane.org> | |
| Subject: | Lucid changes to Firefox default search provider | |
| Date: | Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:03:01 -0800 |
All - I am writing to apprise you of two small but important changes coming to Firefox in Lucid. I have asked the desktop team to start preparing these changes to make them available in Lucid as soon as reasonably possible. Probably on the order of weeks. Change #1 In Lucid, the default home page will respect the search provider settings that you have set in the "Chrome". (The "Chrome" is Mozilla's term for the little search box to the upper right, reachable by control-K, for instance). For Lucid, this will definitely work for switching between Google and Yahoo!, we don't yet know what other providers will be in scope for Lucid. If a user has Google set as their search provider,they will have exactly the experience they do today. If they switch to Yahoo!, the default home page will switch to using a Yahoo! search. If they switch back to Google, the default home page will switch back to using the Google search, exactly like today. Searching from Chrome will continue to work exactly as it does today. Change #2 Change #2 is changing the default search provider in Firefox to Yahoo! Note that this won't in any way effect the ability of a user to choose and use the search provider of their choice. It's literally 2 easily discoverable clicks to change this setting, a simple matter of switching to that search provider in the chrome by clicking on the icon and choosing the desired provider. Note also that Yahoo! does not share any personally identifiable or usage information. Why? I am pursuing this change because Canonical has negotiated a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo! and this revenue will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Platform. This change will help provide these resources as well as continuing to respect our user's default search across Firefox. Cheers, Rick
Posted Jan 27, 2010 1:22 UTC (Wed)
by Sho (subscriber, #8956)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 15:36 UTC (Wed)
by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2010 1:24 UTC (Wed)
by jwb (guest, #15467)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 3:47 UTC (Wed)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (3 responses)
What is so bad?
I know I am going to be using the hell out of Yahoo when using Ubuntu!
Posted Jan 27, 2010 3:48 UTC (Wed)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 9:50 UTC (Wed)
by fergal (guest, #602)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 28, 2010 5:23 UTC (Thu)
by pjm (guest, #2080)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2010 1:43 UTC (Wed)
by cowsandmilk (guest, #55475)
[Link] (6 responses)
Assuming that sticking with Google made money for Mozilla from their deal, Canonical is essentially
It isn't like this dynamic is necessarily new though. On FLOSS Weekly, the author of Ardour
Posted Jan 27, 2010 2:42 UTC (Wed)
by denials (subscriber, #3413)
[Link] (4 responses)
It would be a small thing to do, but would at the very least provide
Posted Jan 27, 2010 3:38 UTC (Wed)
by andrewsomething (guest, #53527)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 4:13 UTC (Wed)
by denials (subscriber, #3413)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 8:53 UTC (Wed)
by dgm (subscriber, #49227)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 31, 2010 21:44 UTC (Sun)
by denials (subscriber, #3413)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2010 3:51 UTC (Wed)
by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
[Link]
http://popey.com/blog/2010/01/26/yahoobuntu/#comment-1905
Perhaps they are getting a cut too.
Posted Jan 27, 2010 2:39 UTC (Wed)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (7 responses)
I've switched to using It's a meta search engine that focusses on privacy by not logging your IP address and your searches. On the technical side, it's nearly as good as the big name search engine I used previously. Here's a plugin for GNU IceCat / IceWeasel / Firefox: Ixquick
Posted Jan 27, 2010 6:15 UTC (Wed)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2010 6:59 UTC (Wed)
by Tuxie (guest, #47191)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2010 10:45 UTC (Wed)
by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 10:52 UTC (Wed)
by LintuxCx (guest, #14448)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 14:04 UTC (Wed)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (2 responses)
It's still a better bet than using Google directly. The ixquick folks talk a lot about privacy, so maybe they've figured a way to do this right. For example, if they didn't send an IP address to Google, and just sent streams of keywords without any you-specific identifier (or with an ixquick identifier which ixquick ties to your IP address but which is meaningless to Google), then there'd be no problem. If.
Posted Jan 27, 2010 14:11 UTC (Wed)
by LintuxCx (guest, #14448)
[Link] (1 responses)
I looked at the HTML source, it looks like they're fetching the ads from Google themselves and then include them directly in their page (instead of including the ads as an object on the client side). It does mean they're slower, but that's hard to fix.
Posted Jan 31, 2010 17:22 UTC (Sun)
by dmag (guest, #17775)
[Link]
1) when you click on a site from Google/Yahoo, the Referrer field will contain your search terms. So any site you clicked on can see what you searched for. Lots of Wiki sites will highlight the words you searched for if you came from Google/Yahoo. On Ixquik, they appear to use POST for search, so sites can't get your keywords.
2) They do use google ads (so Google gets your IP. Big deal, turn off your router for a day and you'll likely get a new one.) But they don't appear to be sending your keywords to Google (don't know if this is policy or not, but I didn't get any relevant ads, only ixquick banners from Google). So even if Google gets your IP, they don't appear to know what you're searching for.
Posted Jan 27, 2010 3:23 UTC (Wed)
by mattdm (subscriber, #18)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 3:47 UTC (Wed)
by akumria (guest, #7773)
[Link] (1 responses)
They also ship Firefox with a default plugin ("Ubuntu Firefox Modifications") too.
And probably modify the theme as appropriate.
Firefox already ships with Yahoo - I have not had occassion to read the trademark guidelines but I would be surprisedif modifying the packaged defaults breaks the agreement.
Posted Jan 27, 2010 4:01 UTC (Wed)
by mattdm (subscriber, #18)
[Link]
Firefox already ships with Yahoo - I have not had occassion to read the trademark guidelines but I would be surprisedif modifying the packaged defaults breaks the agreement. Prepare to be surprised! Selected special partners can get certain changes approved at Mozilla's discretion. (Which is a decent stab at a compromise, don't get me wrong.) But it's interesting that Canonical could get something like this through. Maybe they just decided that the Linux market is small enough that it's not an argument worth provoking.)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 17:50 UTC (Wed)
by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 17:59 UTC (Wed)
by mattdm (subscriber, #18)
[Link]
Changing the search plugins is explicitly allowed in the Firefox trademark usage guidelines. Where? The Mozilla Trademark Policy doesn't seem to say so, unless I'm missing something. I'd love to be wrong, but it seems very clear that to be allowed use of the trademark, one must distribute only unmodified code and configurations.
Posted Jan 27, 2010 9:25 UTC (Wed)
by Los__D (guest, #15263)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2010 9:31 UTC (Wed)
by brinkmd (guest, #45122)
[Link] (4 responses)
Ubuntu's development is "open", but the default search engine is determined by proprietary advertisement deals, rather than for technical reasons or by the users. Yeah, right.
Posted Jan 27, 2010 9:45 UTC (Wed)
by Hanno (guest, #41730)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 29, 2010 1:51 UTC (Fri)
by maro (guest, #34315)
[Link] (2 responses)
Early Ubuntu releases were cute with their get-a-Debian-desktop-in-less-
Posted Jan 29, 2010 3:38 UTC (Fri)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
I've been using linux since 1994, it's been my desktop since 1997, so I'm not someone who isn't familiar with linux and desktop support. But I recommend Ubuntu for people new to linux, or for people who don't want to maintain their own system (including for family and friends who I provide the support for)
this is the first change I have noticed in the distro to make money. They offer paid support (every linux disto vendor does), and they don't give away the source to tools that run only on their servers. that's also very common.
that's not reason to be as hostile as you seem to be.
now if you really want to get into a distro pissing match, I could start in about all the certified redhat experts who can't admin their way out of a paper bag ;-) but I know that every distro will accumulate bad users along with good users and try very hard to recognise that the vocal group are seldom the majority.
Posted Feb 3, 2010 11:56 UTC (Wed)
by Hanno (guest, #41730)
[Link]
Since a long time, it has also been the only search engine with a built-in, very lucrative business model for those who integrate it: Make Google your users' default and Google will give you a share of the Adsense revenue.
You might want to read up on Mozilla's sources of income. Technical excellence is certainly not the only reason for Google being the default search engine in Firefox.
Google can do this for all of their products, e.g. for Android and ChromeOS: "ThatÂ’s right; Google will pay [manufacturers] to use their mobile OS. I like to call this the 'less than free' business model. This is a remarkable card to play. Because of its dominance in search, Google has ad rates that blow away the competition."
> though the users they seem to collect, judging from what I've seen on their forums, I hope they will keep...
Posted Jan 27, 2010 9:52 UTC (Wed)
by mcon147 (subscriber, #56569)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 11:31 UTC (Wed)
by flammon (guest, #807)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2010 13:53 UTC (Wed)
by clugstj (subscriber, #4020)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 14:27 UTC (Wed)
by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 16:55 UTC (Wed)
by Los__D (guest, #15263)
[Link] (2 responses)
Every time I upgrade Firefox, I have to delete search providers, and restore my sort order afterwards.
Posted Jan 27, 2010 21:17 UTC (Wed)
by proski (subscriber, #104)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2010 23:27 UTC (Wed)
by Los__D (guest, #15263)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2010 18:10 UTC (Wed)
by clugstj (subscriber, #4020)
[Link]
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
I don't really worry about the MSFT/Yahoo connection, but I do feel pretty reluctant to use Yahoo services since the whole Shi Tao brouhaha. Meanwhile, of course, Google is playing the China situation differently.
there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio...
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
market share they have today. No doubt this will be the first thing I change if
I ever install Lucid.
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
desktop Linux. Just because Google kicks it's ass.
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
given MS's apparent desperation maybe not.
Apparently, the payment is for searches, not ad clicks.
searches or ad clicks
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
removing a portion from the Mozilla stream to have their own stream instead.
discusses the dynamic where an open source package through a distribution never gets the chance
to ask people for donations. With specialized software that is replacing closed source software that
would cost hundreds of dollars, the authors would like every user to be given at least a reminder of
the possibility to donate to the software they use. In this case, the distribution might not be
making money (although it could be attracting users and corporate clients and support contracts)
by making it easy to install, but the upstream authors are likely making much less from donations.
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
to partially address the donation (or lack thereof) problem brought up by the
Ardour developer, Ubuntu's at-that-time-still-being-designed Software Centre
should include links to the home pages of the project behind each package. Of
course, other application installer interfaces like Synaptic, etc, could
consider doing this too.
recognition for the team behind each application, drive some traffic to the
associated projects, and perhaps provide a small donation stream to sustain
the project.
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
there is a "Homepage:" field in debian/control.
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
button. Cool, kudos to the Ubuntu devs for that - and thanks for pointing it
out to me.
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
better search engine: ixquick.com
That's a pretty well kept secret. The first time I heard of this search engine, thanks for telling about it.
better search engine: ixquick.com
Thank you! This just became my new default search provider!better search engine: ixquick.com
I recommend the HTTPS version of the plugin though.
better search engine: ixquick.com
better search engine: ixquick.com
better search engine: ixquick.com
better search engine: ixquick.com
better search engine: ixquick.com
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
engine for well over a decade. Personally I don't get why they'd pay Mozilla
to be the default search engine, since Google is what (most) people want to
use anyway.
than-a-day give-away CD's, but release by release Canonical just increase
to disgust me as they try to turn a profit. Other projects and distributors
drive the development that benefit Linux as a whole, while Canonical collect
the press, glory, and users (though the users they seem to collect, judging
from what I've seen on their forums, I hope they will keep...) Upstart is
the only Canonical-sponsored project I can come to think of that is useful
outside of Canonical, and even there you have to fill a copyright assignment
to contribute.
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
> The difference being that Google has been the technically best search engine for well over a decade.Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
If you read the whole response, you'd understand that they're not reverting user customizations, just changing the defaults. By the way, what color is your bike shed?
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Maybe you should file a bug? Even if it's intentional, such behavior would be much harder to defend than changing the original default.
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider
Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider