Default list of search engines in Deskbar

[Ian Jackson]

Loic pointed me at this thread.  I've not been subscribed to this list
until now, so please forgive the lack of proper quoting and
References: header etc.


Firstly I'd like to suggest that this ought to be discussed more
widely because this can be quite a contentious issue.  Choice of
search engines, and particularly choice of the default, is a sensitive
decision with political, privacy and financial implications.

When we choose default search we are sending a very strong message to
our users that this search is in our opinion good and trustworthy.


Some of us may feel that our users would like Google to be the default
but of course that means that we are exposing our users' searches to
Google (who are known to remember them and use them in ways some
people disagree with), with only a small logo as indication that this
is happening.  Personally I'm not a fan of Google's suck-all-the-data
approach.

Of the list in Loic's message, only one of the searches proposed is a
sufficiently general purpose search from an organisation established
to promote the public good - Wikipedia.

Of course Wikipedia is not entirely uncontroversial, but I think if we
don't want our users to explicitly choose a default, and we don't wish
to use this user interface as an interface to a local desktop search,
the default should be Wikipedia because it is the most neutral and
trustworthy of the general searches available.


There is one obvious entry missing: a BBC News search.  There's
probably only room for one news search and the BBC would make sense as
probably the most neutral and reliable.


Finally, there is another question I would like to bring up:
filthy lucre.

Organisations like Google have been known to pay large sums of money
to have their entry be the default.  As I understand it the Mozilla
foundation is largely funded from search engine kickbacks (!)

We need to make an explicit decision whether we want to try to secure
such a source of revenue, where the revenue should go, how far we are
prepared to go in our negotiations with such a partner, and so forth.
Ultimately this would be a decision for the CC or the TB.

Picking a commercial venture and making them the default search,
before we have thought about these questions and without negotiating
with them, would substantially weaken our hand later if we chose to
try to use this as a financial opportunity.

This will of course be a very controversial topic.  It ought not to be
discussed just here on this list.

For what it's worth I prefer Debian's approach to this: Debian don't
seem inclined to try to make money in this way and will just do what
they consider best for their users - and by forgoing pursuit of the
financial rewards of particular choices, they ensure that their
decision can be made solely on the proper basis without the risk of
being `bought', subconsciously or otherwise, and without coming to
rely on income from such an arrangement.

Ian.