> Use Super-A. You can tell Unity exactly what you want to search. And in future you’ll be able to do that from the home lens, too, more easily than the current Lens Bar at the bottom of the Dash.
It sounds like they're working to expand the search functionality with users' best interests in mind, not adding advertisements as everyone seems to think.
> it is being done to track my interests for monetary gain in the form of referral links
They're just search results, not ads. Read the blog post from Shuttleworth.
Thanks. The article states "If a user buys something from Amazon as a result, money is sent to Canonical in the form of affiliate payments." Is the article in error, or has the behavior changed in response to criticism, or do the amazon links have Canonical affiliate codes?
The last seems to be the correct answer - affiliate links are used. I see no evidence Stallman is incorrect and the Shuttleworth blog article does not say they don't use affiliate links.
> The Amazon affiliate referral happens if you've arrived at the Amazon property via a 'tagged' link. Both links clicked via the dash which go to Amazon sites, and the shortcut in the launcher will add the tag. The tag adds a cookie which lasts for 24 hours. If you buy anything during that period, Canonical will get some affiliate revenue.
I'm actually not sure after reading both again -- Shuttleworth seems to imply that they're not doing this for money, but he doesn't explicitly say it.
Either way, these search results are distinctly different from the ads in the launcher that people were talking about a couple weeks ago, but everyone seems to be mixing the two up.
Both can be easily disabled, though. And searching your own machine is still an option.
I find it very hard to believe that anyone, let alone the presumably technologically proficient people at Canonical, would actually think that sponsored search results are useful. When was the last time anyone clicked a sponsored Google result?
I am not a fan of the somewhat common rhetoric that "ads are the new user valued content". If HP or Toshiba installed a browser tool bar into IE that gave them everything you searched for, nobody would question calling it spyware. And if it redirected your searches to some sleazy google proxy type site, i dont think anyone would hesitate calling that advertisement.
These aren't ads though, and Canonical isn't collecting this data with the intention of serving you ads -- they're just diplaying relevant Amazon results along with normal web results when you do a web search through the dash. It's also very easily disabled, and you still have the option of doing local searches confined to your machine.
Ok so when I'm searching for something on my computer I'm presented something other than the files I'm searching for right?
From Wikipedia:
"Advertising is a form of communication for marketing and used to encourage or persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners; sometimes a specific group) to continue or take some new action. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common."
Sounds to me it's exactly the definition of advertising.
From http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182
It sounds like they're working to expand the search functionality with users' best interests in mind, not adding advertisements as everyone seems to think.
> it is being done to track my interests for monetary gain in the form of referral links
They're just search results, not ads. Read the blog post from Shuttleworth.