Amazon search results in the Dash

&#62; <i>The Home Lens of the Dash is a “give me X” experience. You hit the Super key, and say what you want, and we do our best to figure out what you mean, and give you that.</i><p>That argument would be a lot more convincing if the Dash actually displayed results from a lot of places, not just Amazon. What if I want to search the Web? What if I want to search my social networking services? What if I want to look up directions to a location? What if I want to look up a word in a dictionary? (Remember, Ubuntu is popular in schools in some countries.)<p>Shopping is just one of the many, many things that people want from their computers. Generally speaking, when I'm looking for something on the Internet, Amazon is seldom the first place where I go look for it.<p>If you really want to turn the Dash into the ultimate "give me X" experience, at least add Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia to the list. That would make a nice replacement for Firefox's search bar. It might even increase your affiliate revenue. You might also consider providing an API so that third-parties such as DuckDuckGo can develop and distribute their own search integration add-ons. (Extra points if you can correctly guess whether I'm looking for web search results or shopping results at any given time.)<p>&#62; <i>We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already.</i><p>That statement sounds suspiciously like the other Mark that we all know and love/hate. You know, the guy who is trying his damnedest to make privacy obsolete.

Look, Mark - can I call you Mark? - this idea of yours sucks and you should flush it down the toilet.<p>I'm typing this on stock Ubuntu 12.04 and let me describe what your search does and doesn't do.<p>I have a lot of music files on this computer with the phrase "indigo girls" in the title and metadata, okay? So let's see.<p>Searching for that phrase under Home: "Sorry, there is nothing that matches your search." (!!!) Fail.<p>Searching for that phrase under Applications: "Sorry, there are no applications that match your search." Okay!<p>Searching for that phrase under Files and Folders: "Sorry, there are no files or folders that match your search." (!!!) Fail.<p>Searching for that phrase under Music: Gives me 15 results that are "Available to purchase", but clicking on them results in Banshee media player coming up, with no file playing. I have no idea where these results are coming from and can't do anything with them. My local files do not come up. Fail.<p>Searching for that phrase under Videos: Gives me results from "Online", some of which appear to have indigo girls in the title and some of which do not. Apparently these are movies on Youtube that I can rent for $2.99. Most of them don't have anything to do with the Indigo Girls, but I guess you'd get a cut if I rented any of these random movie selections. The top result you suggest for "indigo girls" is "Ladies vs Ricky Bahl", which is some Bollywood movie that has nothing to do with the Indigo Girls. At least they actually work, unlike the Music suggestions. Fail.<p>So in sum, Mark - your lens search utterly, utterly fails at searching for the couple hundred files that are on my computer that match it, and it also fails at monetizing my search results with Youtube and wherever the Music search is supposed to send me to. It literally does not work, at all, in the slightest. At no point did ANY of my local files come up in that search. (Searching for "Indigo" and "indigo" had identical results - none of my local files found. In fact file search doesn't work at all for any search.)<p>Again, this is stock Ubuntu 12.04.<p>&#62;We’re interested in feedback in what sorts of things would be useful to search straight from the home lens, and how to improve the search results, as well as provide better control of the process to you.<p>I'm going to suggest that you search for local files. Apparently this is crazy stuff. But I think it would be an improvement over sending me to rent unrelated Bollywood videos on Youtube. What do you think, Mark?

Why does he have to pretend so hard that he is not trying to make money? Why the dodging? There's nothing wrong in making money. The only thing wrong here is this dishonesty.<p>As many others here said in the other thread, we would gladly pay for Ubuntu, if there was an easy, straight forward, transparent way to do so. I would much prefer that instead of Amazon ads (sorry, I mean "integration").<p>I already pay to be a "friend of eclipse" just because it's easy to do and they deserve it. Or even better, if Ubuntu one services were worth a thing, I would love to pay for it.

"We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already."<p>Sorry but you have root to what exactly? I am not using ubuntu one and I don't trust my data with ubuntu, thank you. And I don't find his arguments convincing seriously. Some of us are old enough to remember "BonziBuddy" who "helped" with our searches and as far as I remember it also Just Worked, except it was an irritating pervasive spyware.<p>Privacy and Functionality are two different spheres, I can't accept something very functional if it invades my privacy.

"These are not ads because they are not paid placement, they are straightforward Amazon search results for your search."<p>both ads and affiliate links make money when you click on them and buy something (nobody would buy ads if they didn't result in sales in one way or another)<p>The precise details of how they are paid for is almost irrelevant. I appreciate affiliate links in search results like this are much better than paid placement ads, but to say they're totally different things is untrue.<p>If Amazon didn't offer an affiliate scheme, would Ubuntu still be so keen to integrate their search results in the same way?

&#62;These are results from underlying scopes, surfaced to the Home lens, because you didn’t narrow the scope to a specific, well scope.<p>This sounds kinda buzzword-ish and ignores the fact that people, basically, don't need Dash to do any of that stuff.<p>&#62;Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already.<p>Chilling.<p>All I trust Ubuntu is they don't intentionally leak data. It's not like I store it on their hard drives.<p>Frankly I was more relaxed about this whole Amazon thing before Mark bothered to write the article. Now, I think it might not be so bad to consider another distro in the future.

He's basically saying that they're integrating Amazon because (besides the obvious reason that that's how they make money) it's the most useful service for the user besides searching their local files&#38;apps. Really? We're that deep in the consumerism mindset that any search I do you're immediately trying to sell me something?<p>I'm resisting as hard as I can. Besides food, energy, and transportation, I could count all the purchases this year and I would probably barely reach 20.

Given the wide array of Linux distro options, why would anyone choose one with this sort of junk included?<p>Remember all the hate for Windows with crapware preinstalled? (they stopped doing that, right?) How is this less distasteful?<p>Why would anyone download Ubuntu <i>avec</i> crap when Ubuntu <i>sans</i> crap will be available via BitTorrent within hrs after release? Someone will fix this bug, obviously, immediately.<p>Clearly, Shuttleworth is getting tired of self-financing his charitable enterprise. But what is he thinking?<p>Disclaimer: I don't always run FOSS Unix, but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.

My initial reaction to non-local search results in the Dash by default was one of dismay, but after reading this post by Shuttleworth, I've decided to reserve judgment until Canonical has worked out all the kinks. <i>The source of conflict</i>, I believe, is that Canonical is trying to serve three distinct market segments which will react very differently to the new feature:<p>* Enterprise customers deploying hundreds or thousands of desktops. They will <i>love</i> this feature, because it will allow them to customize which external and internal online sources employees will be able to search, and then they will be able to track all employee searches.<p>* Regular people -- that is, the kind of people who don't even know about HN. These people will also <i>love</i> non-local search in the Dash. They already search for everything on Google, buy everything through Amazon, and readily hand over all their intimate, personal information to FaceBook... without ever giving their own privacy a second thought.<p>* Power users who're aware of the privacy issues involved. Virtually everyone in this market segment, including me, feels strongly that non-local search should be offered only as an opt-in feature, if at all.<p>Viewed in this light, Canonical's decision to implement non-local search can at least be understood: they're trying to make their customers happy, but they've unintentionally pissed off the smallest of the three market segments above: power users. (Sorry for the harsh language; I can think of no better way to convey how a lot of Ubuntu power users feel about this.) Alas, power users may be the smallest of the three market segments above, but they have disproportionate influence over the other two. Disregarding the concerns of power users may not be a good idea in the long run.<p>In retrospect, Canonical could have -- indeed, should have -- handled the announcement of this feature much better. There was really no announcement; the news was just 'dumped' on the community on a third-party blog. Is this really how Canonical wants to treat power users?

The use of "please don't feed the trolls" to dismiss widespread, valid concerns about your product is pretty obnoxious. I don't think this situation is a huge deal, but I don't think it is trolling either to point it out.

The privacy and liability issues here are significant - disclosure of searches of the local OS potentially revealing the names of documents to third parties - so I think that Ubuntu/Canonical needs to take those onboard and do some re-engineering. If I was running a business, school or government department and thinking about using Ubuntu I'd be reconsidering after reading this.<p>We'll just have to see what turns up in 12.10, but if Canonical are insistent upon heading in this direction then sadly that's a deal-breaker for me, and I won't be able to recommend Ubuntu to others.

As much as I admire and appreciate Ubuntu and all the hard work, time, and money Shuttleworth &#38; Canonical have committed, you simply don't end a "setting the record straight on user concerns" piece with a veiled threat/warning about having everyone's root.

The problem is that I don't have enough screen real estate to have a search function that is literally "search everything for X".<p>Even Google the king of search separates it's searches down into different categories for pictures/video etc. What is the eventual endgame here anyway?<p>When I want to run an xterm, is it really necessary to spin off hundreds of HTTP requests to every retailer/social network on the planet to find stuff that's probably completely unrelated?<p>I run software programs probably 100x-1000x more than I do online shopping for anything.<p>Sure you <i>can</i> do Start+A to get direct to application search, but MS has spend the last almost 20 years training us that "Start gets your programs".<p>In fact even Metro for all of it's fault, still knows that it's important to give people a nice uncluttered list of programs when they ask for them.

Rather than address concerns, straight up snark on Twitter. <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/ubuntu/tweets" rel="nofollow">https://mobile.twitter.com/ubuntu/tweets</a>

I'd like to see the real thinking (and data if there is any) behind this decision. Did they do some tests where they asked new users to find and buy a book, and did those users try searching in unity for it?<p>Or did someone say "How can we get affiliate links into Ubuntu as a source of income?"<p>He seems to be suggesting this is user led (or at least, aimed at making a better experience for the users). Which I suspect is bullshit, but I could be wrong. I'm not an average user.

All the problems with this could be trivially avoided if it was a separate lens, rather than showing up in the home lens, which we expect to be searching our own computer.<p>I have opened a bug report for this: <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-lens-shopping/+bug/1054776" rel="nofollow">https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-lens-shoppin...</a>

No thank you sir. No thank you.

This feature is totally useless for Ubuntu users from countries like India where Amazon is not present.

Ok, but where will we go from here? If there will be 100 sources of online search, will it make 100 HTTP requests on every search? Or will there be yet another (I'm sure it will be closed-source) search engine that will "aggregate" other search engines?

Ubuntu: EOL-ed at 12.04?

Wow. What utterly transparent bullshit. I would have much preferred honesty about his desire to generate revenue. I could respect that.

XEX

&#62;We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already.<p>Wait, so my personal local file search keywords are sent to <i>both</i> Ubuntu and Amazon? If anything, that's only slightly better than just Amazon having them along with the IP address.<p>And, no, you don't have root or control of my data, unless you're telling us about some backdoors you're inserting into Ubuntu.<p>&#62;Here’s a quick Q&#38;A on the main FUD-points.<p>FUD? Really? Is he trying to imply the outrage is manufactured by Microsoft or Oracle?<p>This is crossing a line that an OS should not cross. What next? Showing me local grocery results when I make a note to buy milk?<p>People are smart enough to pull up a browser to search for things to buy.