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Ubuntu is using Yahoo! now!

Posted 02-15-2010 at 10:05 AM by jaymarting

Ubuntu is switching the default search from Google to Yahoo!

Those of you testing out the development version of Ubuntu Lucid should notice a change in Firefox very soon. The default search provider for new installations of Ubuntu Lucid and upgrades will be Yahoo! and not Google. Canonical have struck a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo! which generates income for the company. This money should help pay the wages of Ubuntu Developers employed by Canonical.

There appears to be a small but growing backlash against the strength of Google. Apple has been reportedly considering changing the iPhone default search engine to Bing to balance against Google's inroads within the phone business. Is this a reflection of Google making inroads into the operating system world?

Regardless, what does this mean on a daily basis? What does this look lile?

So when using the search box in the top right corner of Firefox on Ubuntu, you’ll be taken to a Yahoo! results page rather than the old default Google one. If you are upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 and you had Google as your search provider (the previous default) then this will change to Yahoo!. You can of course change the search provider, this is merely the default for Lucid. Doing so will mean your search revenue won’t go via Yahoo! to Canonical. That’s your choice. Just know that how you search now affects the health of Ubuntu development.

In addition, the browser start page – that is the page you see initially when you open the browser – will reflect whatever the default search provider is. So in the top right, if you choose "Google" you’ll get the Google start page, and conversely if you choose "Yahoo!" you’ll get the Yahoo! start page when you first open the browser. Again, you can change the start page to be blank or use some other search provider. These are just the new defaults.


Obviously this will cause some uproar within the Ubuntu community. When these sorts of things were previously messed with, there were a few heated complaints and reports of issues. So we shall see how this works out.
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Comments

  1. Old Comment
    changing my setting without my explicit permission for doing so? what if that's critically important in current environment?
    I don't really get that.
    Posted 02-15-2010 at 10:22 AM by Web31337 Web31337 is offline
  2. Old Comment
    It's just a cool way for users to support the project without spending any of their own money to do so. Other distros do it. Crunchbang and Linux Mint come to mind. It helps raise funds for the distro.

    I have a friend who uses Linux Mint, but does not wish to support the project because of this. So he simply changed the default search. However, it is changed back every time Firefox updates, so last time he uninstalled Firefox entirely and replaced it with one downloaded from Mozilla's web site.

    -Robin
    Posted 02-15-2010 at 01:47 PM by dixiedancer dixiedancer is offline
 

  



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