Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash [LWN.net]

Mark Shuttleworth explains a revenue sharing agreement between Canonical and Amazon. An early implementation has landed in Ubuntu 12.10 (due in October), where products from Amazon are displayed in the user's search results and if the user buys something, Canonical gets a cut. "We’re not putting ads in Ubuntu. We’re integrating online scope results into the home lens of the dash. This is to enable you to hit “Super” and then ask for anything you like, and over time, with all of the fantastic search scopes that people are creating, we should be able to give you the right answer. These are not ads because they are not paid placement, they are straightforward Amazon search results for your search. So the Dash becomes a super-search of any number of different kinds of data. Right now, it’s not dynamically choosing what to search, it’s just searching local scopes and Amazon, but it will get smarter over time."

to post comments

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 24, 2012 20:20 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (guest, #5198) [Link] (14 responses)

I think this is a neat idea and hopefully leads to a better sustainable revenue stream for Canonical so that they can keep operational. This feature does need some clear privacy boundaries though, it's nice that they are anonymizing the search queries by running it through their servers but this should also have a prominent option in the privacy settings to turn it off, in addition to the expedience of just removing the plugin's package.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 24, 2012 22:02 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (7 responses)

There are other issues beyond privacy. There will be a desire from some people to limit the amount of network activity consumed by a query to the minimum necessary to complete the intended query. When the goal is to search for an on-disk file do you really want a network transaction out to a 3rd party to occur every single time?

Does it really make sense for all queries through the desktop UI to hit the network and pull down images and other data, every single time?

Metered or reduced bandwidth scenarios..and you go to search for a file on disk via the dash..and it goes out on the network automatically to give you search related suggestions without explicit consent to do the network search eating what is most likely your most cost-senstive or scarce system resource.. is that really a good idea? I'm not convinced it is. Nor do I think turning it off entirely really makese sense either. There has to be a way to design in query by query selectivity for more suggestions beyond local datastores. I refuse to believe that the designers cannot accomodate a reality other than the "always-on" "always-connected" "always interested in being a consumer" pov.

We aren't all on FIOS to the home yet, neither do we all have all-you-can-eat 3g data plans. And I would daresay that just as much true in the rising tech markets such as China and India, where Canonical has a hope of making OEM pre-install deals happening, as it is in tech mature western markets where they'll have far less of a chance to get traction with OEMs.

The deep network search integration itself, and the default search providers chosen aren't the real issue. But how this is exposed to users needs continue to give users selective control on exactly which queries result in a network transaction and burn network resources.

-jef"I don't always query network search providers when looking for files on my system which reference "wolf lure", but when I do, I ask Amazon for related tempting deals of the day"spaleta

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 11:54 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (6 responses)

When the goal is to search for an on-disk file do you really want a network transaction out to a 3rd party to occur every single time?

In cities, at least, broadband has reached such a level of penetration that this is an almost irrelevant concern except for privacy reasons. Heck, Chrome has sent out queries on an (amortized) *keystroke-by-keystroke* basis for years: complaints have been minimal, and all of them that I've seen have been privacy-related, not bandwidth- or efficiency-related.

Bandwidth these days is more than high enough that even rural satellite broadband users just won't notice this (as long as it's done asynchronously). Heck, I work from home over the Internet and have never once blown my pathetic 4Gb/month bandwidth cap despite basically living on the net. What blows caps is not incidental usage like this but things like iplayer, youtube, and bittorrent streaming.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 15:38 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (5 responses)

As a person who actually uses sat links on a regular basis in remote locations.. in the United States. I'm telling you flat out, that you are absolutely wrong about the viability of sat broadband for the always connected lifestyle.

And again.. chrome... the "web browser" is an application that you explicitly start and it connects to the network. It is understood to be a network consuming application. Your actual desktop search UI? Should it really be networked by default? You seem to have missed my point. There maybe be an implicit assumption sitting in the heads of some users that certain types of network activity, need to be part of an explicit transaction that involves the user making the choice to engage in networked services. For web browser, the act of firing up the application becomes that explicit transaction, the bright line the user chooses to cross, knowing that by doing so they are potentially using network services. The web browser as a thing is generally understood to be a networked thing. But the desktop integrated search UI? Does logging into your computer then become the choice point for interactive network activity? I'm really not sure that's going to sit well. If it did, well then we'd all be happily using Chromebooks.

I think the always networked is a hard sell to a segment of users who want to feel in control of their computing interactions. And I think the linux faithful has a larger population of people who want to feel in control of what their computer is doing than perhaps the wider population. It's probably one of the unvocalized things that attract people to any traditional linux offering really.

I think if Canonical is really serious about the always-on always-connected lifestyle, and want to build products that cater to that lifestyle without compromising their vision for the take-control lifestyle.. I think they'll lose their appeal to a wide swath of their current userbase. If that is what it takes for them to make the leap across the chasm into a mainstream mass-market product...its a pretty high stakes bet. I think they can compromise a weebit and make what they are trying to do more palatable to their existing userbase instead of burning that particular bridge. Then again, fires are cool...so I'm kinda conflicted over what I want to see them do.

-jef

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 26, 2012 11:43 UTC (Wed) by njwhite (guest, #51848) [Link]

> I think the always networked is a hard sell to a segment of users who want to feel in control of their computing interactions. And I think the linux faithful has a larger population of people who want to feel in control of what their computer is doing than perhaps the wider population. It's probably one of the unvocalized things that attract people to any traditional linux offering really.

Exactly right, I would say.

I agree with other comments that I don't really see the utility, but even if it was there, the privacy issues are reminicent of exactly the sorts of things that people choose to move away from proprietary operating systems to avoid. Anybody else remember installers which bundled tons of other "fun, helpful software" on Windows? I'm all for Ubuntu having diverse, creative revenue streams, but if they go this direction I think (and hope) it would lose them users, and more importantly, trust.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 26, 2012 22:06 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

As a person who actually uses sat links on a regular basis in remote locations.. in the United States. I'm telling you flat out, that you are absolutely wrong about the viability of sat broadband for the always connected lifestyle.

Well, that's interesting. I thought we were talking about typing in a search box sending queries out to the Internet, yet suddenly in order to win the argument you have jumped across to 'the always connected lifestyle'.

I'd hate to point this out, but my mother types things in search boxes on a regular basis, over her satellite broadband link, and it works fine. She's not a member of the 'always connected lifestyle' crowd, though. There are a lot of people in that boat, but you've forgotten they exist.

Personally I have always assumed that virtually anything can and will talk to the network when it sees fit: networking is not something hived off into a few applications, but a property of the system as a whole. The system is networked, not the web browser. Unix systems have been like this for decades, and heavily used by 'people who want to feel in control of what the computer is doing'.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 26, 2012 22:14 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

what you are missing is that some things are expected to use the network, and having those things be slow if you have a bad or not Internet connection is expected.

Having a local search box now require Internet connectivity _IS_ assuming the "always connected" lifestyle.

for people who are "always connected" with fast, low latency connections, the only concerns are privacy related.

for people who do not enjoy such "always connected" environments, these new dependencies on the network are a problem.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 26, 2012 22:39 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

Not true. That is only so if search results do not appear until the Internet side of the search is completed. If they appear as soon as they have any results at all, and then update as new results come in, the net effective latency of the Internet side of the search is zero.

This is not rocket science: Chrome's suggestion box already does it.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 27, 2012 4:57 UTC (Thu) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link]

but I can tell you from first hand experience that it is very dsconcerting and annoying to ha the layout and result page of a dash query jump around for 10 secs after the search. heck, if i type in the das, I probably just want to start GIMP and not earn about all possible gimp media out there.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 24, 2012 22:19 UTC (Mon) by jiu (guest, #57673) [Link] (5 responses)

totally agree with that, Gnome have learnt the hard way (or have they, yet?) the results of taking configuration options away from their users.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 17:20 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (4 responses)

GNOME profits have gone down the drain indeed :-(

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 20:02 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (3 responses)

Good ol' bkor, short on empathy but always ready with a snark.

configuration settings, empathy

Posted Sep 30, 2012 11:19 UTC (Sun) by pjm (guest, #2080) [Link] (2 responses)

That seems like a very snarky and empathy-lacking reply.

It's clear that configuration options have both cost and benefit. The costs and benefits aren't directly comparable, so it can be hard to judge whether or at what point it's best to remove an option; but it does seem that some people and businesses are on balance better served by software with fewer configuration settings. Being able to see other people's viewpoints (one might almost say "having empathy"), one might congratulate the Gnome devs for daring to provide an option better suited for such people, rather than merely complain when one thinks oneself less suited by this choice.

configuration settings, empathy

Posted Oct 3, 2012 20:31 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

If you're talking about the big picture, I totally agree.

I was talking about bkor's one-liner. In reply to a substantial and earnest post, he says something like "I don't care" or "Gnome doesn't care" (the brevity makes it unclear). It's not very easy to empathize with that sort of discussion.

But, yes, I can emulate it. :)

configuration settings, empathy

Posted Oct 3, 2012 20:36 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Dangit, I misread the hierarchy. bkor was responding to snark with snark. Never mind.

Technically I stand by what I said, but it sure wasn't worth adding to this particular thread. *hits undo button*

Privacy? I remember it well!

Posted Sep 24, 2012 20:38 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (6 responses)

I suppose this is just part of a continuing trend with Ubuntu and also with various applications to leak information onto the Internet for questionable benefits in return.

Of course, it can be said that with browser search boxes pointing at Google by default, there's already an uneasy contract between the user and the organisation whose logo is next to the text widget, and I'm sure there have been quite a few accidental queries over the years.

And stuffing an application's menu with "Share on Facebook/Twitter/Picasa/Flickr/Pastebin!", although potentially confusing to new users and yet tempting to those who just want a simple "sharing" solution but who lack the experience to be able to consider that solution's cost in terms of relinquishing privacy and control, at least still upholds a distinction between private and public domains.

But integrating various online services with a built-in desktop feature that the user is relying upon to perform local operations really does border on an intrusion of privacy. It's bad enough that there are actually adverts in Ubuntu - go into the software centre and there's a banner advert, Web 2.0 style, for various products - but playing fast and loose with data originating in a private context is inexcusable.

Privacy? I remember it well!

Posted Sep 25, 2012 4:23 UTC (Tue) by jnh (subscriber, #69758) [Link] (5 responses)

Agreed. Catering to the "Just Works"/ease-of-use-über-alles crowd by relying on integration with 3rd party services is just asking for privacy troubles.

By acting as a proxy for the searches, Canonical creates another potential point of compromise in the information chain, increasing the attack surface, in the parlance of our times. Shuttleworth's argument that using Ubuntu is tacit consent on the part of the user to trust Canonical to not abuse or backdoor their software packages ignores that users are unable to audit this proxy infrastructure, whereas auditing the behavior of locally running software is actually doable. Even if Canonical is trustworthy, funneling user data into a central location creates nontrivial risk, and is of questionable design. (That isn't to say it doens't have advantages, obviously Canonical can smooth over 3rd party search API version-churn on the back-end this way, but is it worth it?)

Ubuntu is, was, and will always be, a consumer-grade distribution, and everything that implies.

Privacy? I remember it well!

Posted Sep 25, 2012 10:12 UTC (Tue) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (4 responses)

So? What is wrong with being a consumer-grade distro? Ok, Canonical claims sometimes to be more than that but pretty much nobody takes that serious so it isn't very harmful. The commercial grade distro's RHEL and SLE are well-entrenched in their niches and there's plenty of use of DIY distro's like Debian and Gentoo too. The serious-deployment ecosystem doesn't need Ubuntu...

Privacy? I remember it well!

Posted Sep 25, 2012 15:13 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (3 responses)

I can see Gentoo as a "do it yourself" distribution, but Debian? Or maybe you meant "decide it yourself", at which point I must suggest "decide for yourself" or DFY as the term of choice.

Depends on what you mean by DIY

Posted Sep 26, 2012 10:13 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (2 responses)

Debian is firmly a DIY distro, in the sense that it has everything, you select only the packages you need (what some people call a meta-distro). By design there isn't even a single supported desktop or kernel (although there are defaults). The core is a minimal system; on top of it you can build a multi-environment desktop or a barebones server.

Depends on what you mean by DIY

Posted Sep 26, 2012 12:25 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, but Debian and Gentoo still have quite some distance between them. The former offers choices ("decide for yourself") and then serves up the experience, whereas the latter involves a lot more self-assembly ("do it yourself"), although I suppose that you can just download binary packages for Gentoo these days and ignore the self-assembly part.

There are defaults, as you say, and that leaves the principal difference between Ubuntu and Debian as being (with the former) that someone else is not only setting the defaults, but also deprecating the other choices and also adding stuff that decides other things on your behalf.

But there's nothing inherent in Debian that should make it "difficult" while Ubuntu must somehow be the "easy" choice.

Depends on what you mean by DIY

Posted Sep 26, 2012 18:52 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

Actually, since Ubuntu has basically everything available that's available in Debian, it doesn't eliminate your option to choose something else, it's just a different set of defaults on a different release schedule.

These two things (a faster, predictable release schedule, and usable defaults) are what has made Ubuntu popular.

At the time Ubuntu started, getting a new desktop/GUI system running was a fairly significant amount of work (not as much work as some made it out to be, but work). After Ubuntu demonstrated how easy it should be, the other desktop distros have drastically improved. Unfortunantly, Debian has not gotten quite as good, some of it may be that Debian is aimed at a far wider range of uses than just the Desktop/GUI segment.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 24, 2012 20:41 UTC (Mon) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link] (1 responses)

I genuinely struggle with the usability argument here. Unless they turn the search into a shop, where I can see product reviews, compare it to similar products, and all those other shop-type features, it's just going to be a really poor experience compared with going to Amazon's site and, y'know, shopping. Will people be so lazy that they won't do a simple search and just go to Amazon? I doubt it. Will the search extend to multiple suppliers and do price / feature comparison? You'd have to hope not. If ever there was a solution in search (sic) of a problem...

I also struggle with the idea that a single search can return good data for all contexts, even if I conceded the idea that a single UI was right (which I don't). Even Google don't attempt to do this.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 5:00 UTC (Tue) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

Those lens that offer external results are already a shop where you can see product reviews etc.

In default Ubuntu 12.04 LTS lens collection the applications lens show you results from Ubuntu Software Center and the music lens shows you results from Ubuntu One Music Store. But there are no direct reviews visible without clicking. That's the selection most ordinary users will see for the next two years unless they pick up half-yearly release.

In 12.10, Amazon is added with the shopping lens and also via video lens for at least those in US. There are now also the Dash previews where you can see ratings, reviews etc. directly in Dash and I'd guess more in time.

You can remove the external site scopes and lens, or if you really want then you'll probably be able to select more suppliers in the future. I'm personally quite fine just the semi-local search / developer oriented lens, although with proper local movie partners that might change. Wikipedia search, LDAP search are uses that are quite nice for Dash.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 24, 2012 21:45 UTC (Mon) by akeane (guest, #85436) [Link] (11 responses)

The sad thing is this wonderful new feature seems only to be for the GUI folk, more discrimination against us old skool CLI users!

Don't worry I have filed a bug report:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/...

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 24, 2012 22:33 UTC (Mon) by mordae (guest, #54701) [Link] (3 responses)

You have filled it against gnome-terminal instead of grep and got closed, you dummy! But seriously, it's only a matter of time until we get:

you@home:~$ portal2
base: portal2: command not found...
Would you like to buy and install Portal 2 via Steam for $7.49 [Y/n]?

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 24, 2012 22:49 UTC (Mon) by akeane (guest, #85436) [Link]

grep was just an example!

Do you really expect me to waste my valuable time filing bugs for find, ls, lex, yacc, whois, nslookup, getent...

Also, when I run ubuntu-bug I get:

Ubuntu Made Easy: A Project-Based Introduction to Linux by Rickford Grant and Phil Bull (Aug 2, 2012)

$34.95 $23.07 Paperback
Order in the next 50 minutes and get it by Tuesday, Sep 25.
Only 12 left in stock - order soon.
More Buying Choices - Paperback
$19.91 new (42 offers)
$20.65 used (12 offers)

(15)
Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping.
Sell this back for an Amazon.com Gift Card
Excerpt
Page 5: ... https://bugs. launchpad. net/ ubuntu/+bug/1/). As Shuttleworth states ... See a random page in this book.
Books: See all 52 items

You're right though, I was being lazy AND a dummy sticking it under gnome-terminal, real man use CRTL-ALT-F1; what a fool I've been ;-)

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 0:30 UTC (Tue) by akeane (guest, #85436) [Link]

yep, and <TAB><TAB> only gives:

akeane@awesome-haX0r:~$
Display all 2717 possibilities? (y or n)

Should give:

akeane@awesome-haX0r:~$
Display all 3,141,596,254 results possibilities? (y or n)
Do you feel lucky? (y)

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 3:02 UTC (Tue) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link]

Actually, that one might just be a sensible way to do it.
After all, Ubuntu's command-not-found is actually quite helpful, telling you the apt-get command you need to run.

I'd have no objection to that instance, provided that I had already chosen to add the commercial repository to apt, and that the query was a local one, matching against a local list of available packages (rather than sending the full text of any potentially mis-spelled command + args over the net to a 3rd party).

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 0:21 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (guest, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

That's really sarcastic, man. 8-)

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 0:25 UTC (Tue) by akeane (guest, #85436) [Link]

Sarcasm is the slowest form of twit!

:-)

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 15:07 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (4 responses)

Whatever next? Google Suggest for the command line?

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 26, 2012 16:20 UTC (Wed) by gioele (subscriber, #61675) [Link] (3 responses)

> Whatever next? Google Suggest for the command line?

http://ridiculousfish.com/shell/images/autosuggestion.png

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 27, 2012 9:41 UTC (Thu) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link] (1 responses)

>> Whatever next? Google Suggest for the command line?

> http://ridiculousfish.com/shell/images/autosuggestion.png

In the last 3 days I've been using Zsh's predict-on for the first time. I still can't decide whether it is a blessing or a curse.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 28, 2012 17:08 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

It's interesting, but unless I can get predict-next and predict-previous widgets, it's definitely a curse. ("man foo" gets predicted to "man foobar" and there's no easy way to say "no, bad predict"). I suppose I should bind "kill-line" and use it.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 28, 2012 18:21 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

No, I actually meant Google Suggest where your shell reaches out to Google on every keystroke, pulling in "popular" queries and frequently stupid ones, too - just start typing a famous name and see what it suggests - for the "convenience" of being able to mix local commands with local and remote searches without switching windows in one huge conceptual tangle that makes technical support - the kind that Canonical probably doesn't do - so much fun for anyone who does have to support users running that "new-fangled Linux thing".

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 24, 2012 21:52 UTC (Mon) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link] (1 responses)

If meta-search is what this is going to be then someone should dig out Nat Friedman's Dashboard: http://nat.org/dashboard/

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 24, 2012 21:55 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Google Now seems to be an effort to implement Nat's concept (though the idea has been around longer).

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 24, 2012 21:59 UTC (Mon) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (2 responses)

Isn't 12.10 supposed to be in Feature Freeze, or something along those lines?

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 2:54 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> Isn't 12.10 supposed to be in Feature Freeze, or something along those lines?

Ah, but Mark has root and those restrictions don't apply.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 12:17 UTC (Tue) by Otus (subscriber, #67685) [Link]

And UI freeze, yes.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 24, 2012 22:37 UTC (Mon) by ernstp (guest, #13694) [Link] (6 responses)

You can always:
sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 0:23 UTC (Tue) by akeane (guest, #85436) [Link] (5 responses)

You can always:
sudo apt-get remove ubuntu

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 1:15 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

I tried it and it didn't work.

Does it matter that I am running CentOS?

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 1:41 UTC (Tue) by akeane (guest, #85436) [Link] (1 responses)

D'oh!

Sorry, my bad, I just tried the command here and all I got was:

Ubuntu Linux Toolbox: 1000+ Commands for Ubuntu and Debian Power Users by Christopher Negus and Francois Caen (Nov 28, 2007)
<snip>
$
and Ubuntu is *still* installed, it even echoed $? as 0

:-(

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 12:24 UTC (Tue) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link]

Heh, you were accused of snarking in that bugrep. I can't imagine why :-)

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 3:05 UTC (Tue) by theophrastus (guest, #80847) [Link] (1 responses)

somewhere someone probably already has the script that is a series of "sudo apt-get purge"s and "sudo apt-get install"s to turn a standard Ubuntu install into something tolerable..?

purge *unity*...

(yes yes... "wget http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.5/ia64/iso-cd/deb..." ...)

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 10:05 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

I'm not sure downloading an ia64 install image is ever going to make things tolerable.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 2:43 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] (4 responses)

I do hope the application meets Australia's legislative requirements: disclosing the existence of a commission, etc.

This is a prime example of the collection of personal data on servers outside of Australia's jurisdiction which concerns privacy advocates.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 9:36 UTC (Tue) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link] (2 responses)

I suppose Canonical will not be selling its products in Australia then?

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 15:41 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (1 responses)

Canonical sells products?

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 22:08 UTC (Tue) by misc (subscriber, #73730) [Link]

Technically, yes :
http://shop.canonical.com/

But I agree that the comment was not clear for me either.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 12:05 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I think you'll find the EU has rather toothsome privacy laws too -- and IIRC those are modelled on the UK's older laws.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 8:56 UTC (Tue) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link]

This is the kind of search system that got Samsung fined over the Galaxy Nexus (for those who still remember it) and Galaxy S3, and prompted Google to patch Android lest the phones could not be sold in California IIRC.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 25, 2012 20:53 UTC (Tue) by cyanit (guest, #86671) [Link]

Are people actually going to use desktop search to search something that might result in a relevant buyable item which is not downloadable commercial software?

Normally, you use desktop search to navigate to something you know is on your machine, and use search in a web browser to look for something you don't have.

I mean, if someone searches for a book name in desktop search, it's most likely because they want to open the unlicensed PDF copy they think is on their hard disk, and would thus either open it or download a new one if it's not actually there, rather than buying anything.

It seems Canonical would only make decent income if they either somehow convinced everyone to use desktop search for all web and product searches too, or implemented the feature in Ubuntu's browsers instead of the dash.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 26, 2012 21:45 UTC (Wed) by xorbe (guest, #3165) [Link] (1 responses)

"We’re integrating online scope results into the home lens of the dash."

It reads like output from the internet BS generator.

"We're enhancing web-centric data-mining for pro-user code with next gen UI."

Summary: advertising in denial.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 26, 2012 21:49 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Neil Brown beat you to it.

Shuttleworth: Amazon search results in the Dash

Posted Sep 27, 2012 7:26 UTC (Thu) by geuder (subscriber, #62854) [Link]

What bothers me most is not how it affects me, but that there is yet one more company which used to have a somewhat positive image in my mind is turning towards more evil. (It doesn't affect me because I hardly use any plain Ubuntu, but more [KX]ubuntu, and even if I did I know about apt-get remove.)

But at least they seem to listen to the public outcry to some degree:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/09/27/online-dash-search-up...