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Ubuntu switches back to Google as default search engine
- zephyrfalcon 17y agoI was wondering why they chose to switch to Yahoo in the first place. The answer is at [https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2010-January/002396.html https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2010-Januar...]: "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."
- rbanffy 17y agoIt seems, in the end, Google offered a sweeter deal.
- bluesmoon 17y agoThe page seems to give no real reason. I wonder what happened to transparency in open source.
- evancaine 17y agoNothing. It's right there in the code base. This was a business decision by Canonical. I too would have liked to have seen an explanation as to why the change was made but at the end of the day, it's the code and not the organisation that's open source.
- 00joe 17y agoA couple of years ago Ubuntu went to Google asking for a revenue sharing deal, Google refused, even though they had done it many times before. Search was going to be Ubuntu's primary income in the netbook space. At the time Google probably thought they owned search. Its amazing what a little competition will do. I would love to see Firefox and Safari change their default search to Bing (I would still use Google). Who knows, Google might start getting serious about things like privacy.
- noamsml 17y agoThis makes a whole lot of sense. You can;t really ask for money from Google to keep them as the default search provider unless you're willing to change search providers.
- josefresco 17y agoIf I were Microsoft or even better Yahoo! I'd back up a large dump truck full of cash to entice Firefox to switch the default engine. They prob would never take it, but you never know.
- zandorg 17y agoBut Firefox (Mozilla foundation) make around $100 million a year from Google already.
- tvon 17y agoGoogle does a good job with marketing against Apple with "Open", it would do wonders for MS to market against Google with "Privacy".
- nl 17y agoWhy does anyone think Microsoft protects your privacy any better than Google does? FFS, Google was the ONLY search engine which went to court to protect your searches from collection under COPA: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-146420.html http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-146420.html Microsoft, Yahoo etc just handed their logs over. Gmail's still the only webmail provider which uses SSL by default. There are numerous similar cases. Microsoft can't use "Privacy" to market against Google because they do less to protect your privacy that Google do. (They could argue "we are less competent than Google are at doing things with the information we also collect, so you are less likely to get freaked out when our services appear to read your mind". However, I'm unconvinced that lack-of-competence is a winning marketing strategy. But hey.. it seems to be working for Sarah Palin, so what do I know...)
- 17y ago
- wheels 17y agoTotally called this one: I don't think it's an accident that this announcement comes far away enough from the next release for there to be time for Google to make them a better offer. Even if that doesn't happen in the next release, this may be Canonical's way of showing their hand. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079909 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079909
- aditya 17y agoInterestingly, there was now "Why?" section to this new note. I'm surprised that Ubuntu has enough of an installed base for Google to have made a counter-offer. Also, isn't Bing powering Yahoo's search these days anyway?
- sjs 17y agoThere are millions of people using Linux. A few percentage of desktop users worldwide is not an insignificant number.
- Tuna-Fish 17y agoBased on the amount of people downloading updates, Canonical recently guessed that there are about 12 million Ubuntu users worldwide.
- aditya 17y agoRight - and there's about 350 million Firefox users in all, so that 12 million is <5%, which is what made me wonder. Via: http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/01/21/firefox-3-6-release/ http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/01/21/firefox-3-6-release/
- enjo 17y agohttp://anotherubuntu.blogspot.com/2010/04/ubuntu-claims-12-million-users-as-lucid.html http://anotherubuntu.blogspot.com/2010/04/ubuntu-claims-12-m... Ubuntu is claiming 12 million users. That's not incredibly big, but it's probably enough to make Google take notice.
- yanw 17y agoIt was ridiculous to ship Ubuntu with a default search engine that basically is or will be powered by windows when the superior alternative is powered by Linux, but I suppose the bluff worked.
- roadtrip 17y agohttp://duckduckgo.com http://duckduckgo.com would have been a much better choice!
- mapleoin 17y agoyeah, they could've paid Canonical in duck feathers.
- ctingom 17y agoOr just put it on their bill.
- il 17y agoThis looks like a sock puppet account astroturfing for duckduckgo. I wouldn't expect them to resort to tactics like that.
- samdk 17y agoThere are technologies awesome enough for people to want to evangelize for them. DuckDuckGo is one of them--it doesn't need sock puppets.
- tuxychandru 17y agoBut it does seem a bit odd that the only participation in HN by this user has been posting comments praising DuckDuckGo!
- anonjon 17y agoThere are not really enough posts on the account to establish that. Although two posts in the same thread with approximately the same content is a little fishy...
- epi0Bauqu 17y agoNo, its not me.
- deleted 17y ago
- stanleydrew 17y agoNow they just need to replace Firefox with Chrome as the default browser.
- kno 17y agoLet’s recap why they first changed from Google to Yahoo!: "factors such as user experience, user preferences", really? Since when did Yahoo had better user anything than Google?????