Thoughts on advertisements in Ubuntu 12.10

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 1:37 AM,  <colinmcc at direct.ca> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Reading Shuttleworth's blog it seems clear that he/Ubuntu has decided to
> make 'Home' searches also pass the query on to Amazon, albeit anonymously,
> as far as the user is concerned.
>
> There has been a lot of internet chat recently about the different
> relevance of Google Searches Vs Amazon and the fact that Amazon returns
> 'things to purchase' while Google returns 'Information'. This is reflected
> in the two companies business models, and, I suspect Amazon searches make
> Amazon more 'loot' than Google searches do to Google.
>
> If Shuttleworth's aim in using Amazon as a search answer engine is to
> cream of a percent (or two) of any subsequent transaction then we really

I'm not sure it is, based on the actual implementation. Part of the
use of sending people's search results in normally to not only list
what people searched for, but also to "track" these searches by IP
address. Removing this from the actual search (via Canonical servers)
would normally reduces the actual relevance of the data, and as such,
its worth.

Note that I was not involved in any of this, so I'm just speculating here.

> can't complain, he/and his Ubuntu project deserve major accolades and have
> brought great exposure to  a Microshi#s alternative, but that said, I for

OT: It this sort of attack really needed? I find it distasteful to
attach names to Microsoft, no matter what name it is and no matter
what evil things they may have done, and far easier to just avoid
mentioning the name altogether.

> one, would like to be able to customise my 'searches' to use the search
> engine(s) I chose, which may well differ depending on the 'type' of result
> I'm seeking. Eg info or where to buy something.

So would I. What Mark mentioned there is that this is a first jab at
providing more "relevant" search results when you type anything into
the Home scope. Patches are welcome, so I'm just we'll see patches to
allow choosing where to send these requests by default and to turn it
on/off before long.

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre <mathieu.tl at gmail.com>
Freenode: cyphermox, Jabber: mathieu.tl at gmail.com
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