Firefox Search In Ubuntu 10.04 Changed To Google

kai_hiwatari writes "Sometime back Canonical decided to change the default search in Firefox that comes Ubuntu 10.04 to Yahoo! from Google. In a surprising turn-around, Canonical have decided to a ditch Yahoo! for Google. Rick Spencer from Canonical announced that Google will now be the default Firefox search in Ubuntu 10.04, not Yahoo! as was previously decided."

Comments

Good for them

[iammani]

I dont think any one would want Yahoo as default search

Re:Good for them

[Krneki]

I dont think any one would want Yahoo as default search

Who gives a shit about what users wants anyway?

Look at Microsoft or Apple, they tell you what you need.

Re:Good for them

[sopssa]

Exactly. Why is this news? Canonical calculated that they get better commissions from Google than Yahoo at this point. It leads me to believe that Google increased their payout for Canonical and they switched back from Yahoo.

/thread

Re:Good for them

[AvitarX]

If I had to guess it would be that people were ditching yahoo! and changing their homepage etc.

So even though yahoo! was paying more, people fleeing the default lead to a lot of zeros getting averaged in for canonical.

Re:Good for them

[shutdown -p now]

Alternatively, they could have realized that the PR hit they would take with geek & power user audience from going with Yahoo would cost them more than any direct revenue they'd get from that. And they do need geeks to do evangelizing, and to some extent tech support (forums etc) for them.

Re:Good for them

[pbhj]

To attempt to turn Yahoo down and go with a worse offer from Google? Surely Yahoo will never look at them again and Google will have cut their offer from the original that was considered not good enough. I can't really see your interpretation being right.

It probably doesn't matter

[blahbooboo]

If you're running Linux as your desktop OS, I suspect you have the necessary knowledge & skills to change the default search engine in your web browser

Re:It probably doesn't matter

[Compaqt]

Well, Ubuntu claims to want to be "Linux for Human Beings".

Although, on the other hand, the switch to Yahoo gives just about the same user experience as Google for the average user. You type a search query, it gives you results, in the same green and blue colors, even.

I doubt many average users would even care to change, but if they did, the UI to change it to Google is right there out in front, and only takes a single click.

Definitely not like the moving of the window controls, which does in fact change the user experience; average users are likely to want to change it; and average users are unlikely to know how to or to want to mess with Gconf to move them back and have them still messed up because the graphics are only meant for a single order of the buttons.

A good sign?

[DoofusOfDeath]

The switch to Yahoo was due to a revenue sharing deal. The switch back to Google was (reportedly) to stick users with a more "familiar" default.

So it sounds like Canonical is putting users first, which strikes me as a very good policy in the long-term, if they want to grow the user base.

What's the big deal?

[mayberry42]

it's just a bloody search engine. How is this newsworthy (even for /.)?

Re:Unfortunately

[Sounder40]

Fortunately one Canonical employee is prepared to share what they know with us: from TFA:
  Rick Spencer, who announced the change back to Google, said that Canonical have decided to change back to Google after deciding that Google Search will be more familiar to a lot of users upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04...

Of course, you may choose not to believe that. But Canonical are providing an explanation.

If "familiarity" was the issue, then why move the fsck'ing window buttons to the upper left? I don't buy that as an argument.

Re: Saw it coming

[TaoPhoenix]

Did you see it coming enough to make a couple of good stock calls? In hindsight it would have only taken about 4:
Buy MS in 1994 just before Win95.
Buy Yahoo and Google in 1995.
Buy Apple around 1999.
Sell Yahoo in 2001 just before the crash.
Sell MS around 2002 just after Win XP
Sell Apple = pending TBD.

Only one?

[Thyamine]

Maybe I'm the only one, but I never use the search box. I just have Google as my home page, so I'm just a new tab away from my preferred search anyways. And with Chrome I don't even need to wait for the page to load now.

Re:Only one?

[SharpFang]

My home page is about:blank. If I need a new tab for something else than a search, I don't want to wait for Google to load, fight with the stop button and risk my absolutely hated: paste URL into the URL bar and have it replaced by Firefox upon finishing loading of the current page.

Re:Unfortunately

[segedunum]

If "familiarity" was the issue, then why move the fsck'ing window buttons to the upper left? I don't buy that as an argument.

Heh. Hey, if we copy off the Mac and make it look like a Mac, but, you know, don't go the whole hog and clone the whole Mac UI, because that would be, you know, silly, then maybe something......will happen? Clearly, they've got bitten by the bug that if they clone Mac OS X then that will solve all of their problems. Also, why bother to change the search to Yahoo if familiarity was ever important to them?

Personally, I think Canonical have gone nuts right now with the sorts of things they're coming out with. Maybe they have to find ways in which they can make money because they've now burned through Mark's cash?

Re:Give us a choice! Let us pick!

[atisss]

That's a good option. Or create "randomsearch.org" which would redirect to random search engine each time, thus giving users option to feel different engines and later choose one.

Re: Saw it coming

[guyminuslife]

Buy Google in 1995?

"[Google] was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998, with its initial public offering to follow on August 19, 2004."

He must have really seen it coming.

Also, by "the crash" are you referring to the dot-com bust? 'Cause I think you might want to sell in 2000, not 2001.

Re: Saw it coming

[barzok]

Buy Yahoo and Google in 1995.

Buying stock in a company 2 years before it was created, and 9 years before its IPO, would be one hell of an achievement.

Re:The only solution

[macbuzz01]

I've got em:

google.com
images.google.com
video.google.com
maps.google.com
news.google.com
shopping.google.com

Google search ain't so good anymore

[phorm]

Has anyone else notice that google's search is actually starting to become a bit spammed out? I love most of big G's services, but searching seems to have become somewhat of an abysmal exercise of hunt-and-dig through sites that are massively spamming for key-words. I'm not talking about those like experts-exchange either, but rather the thousands of throwaway-domains that pop up in the top search results (especially for less common searches, like programming stuff), yet other than spammed keywords, have NOTHING to do with what you were searching for.

Maybe Google needs some way to moderate/report sites that spam in this manner, so that their crawlers can take a bit more care with those domains, etc.

Re:But why?

[SalsaDoom]

Thats not it.

If that was true, they would change the buttons on gnome back to the way it is on every other distro.