[Cialug] Canonical - Yahoo deal; thoughts?

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 7:26 AM, Matt Carter <carter at carterpants.com> wrote:
> It just raises too many questions.. why would Canonical want any
> Bing-tainted money? What did Bing get in return?
>
> You could start at the basic superstition level and just assume its a money
> deal.
>
> Or you could go to the extreme and say Canonical is now in bed with
> Microsoft and sold its soul for the right price, allowing vital info to be
> gathered from its users and given to M$ to begin the Linux extermination.
>
> It just doesn't have a good taste, that's all.

As someone who has been close to the project in the past, I can tell
you that there is some inaccuracy in the news reports.

I've personally been working with Google for 2 years on this project
and they refuse to give our users a good experience, forcing us to use
the Google "Custom Search" (aka CSE). We would like people to get to
use the standard search experience that you get if you search google
directly (i.e. w/ the login buttons on the top right, the gmail,
calendar, docs links on the top left and a standard ad placement and
search results list.

Yahoo, on the other hand, is eager to help us create a good user
experience. So we're exploring it as an option. My responsibilities
have increased in the last couple years but my resources have not, so
we've moved this project off of my plate to a new team. Therefore I'm
no longer privy to the exact details of what is happening w/ this
currently.

However, Ubuntu has been from day one about creating a good, clean,
easy user experience. You've probably seen gradual, and in some cases
radical changes to improve on this over the years. It should be
pervasive, including this area of the desktop.

Whatever search engine is set by default, it's easy to change. Just
click the button in the search box to choose a different search
engine. We already have numerous options in there (I don't have a 9.10
machine close but I believe Yahoo is an option there).

People think this is all about money. Like most things in life, it's
not that simple.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter