
Amazon search results in the Dash - kracekumar
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182
======
kijin
> _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._

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.)

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.

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.)

> _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._

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.

~~~
flatline3
> _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.)_

Apple already tried this with Sherlock. It just isn't something people seem to
actually want.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)>

When Apple killed Sherlock, they replaced it with Spotlight (local search
only), and Dashboard (widgets that you can use to find specific network
information without going to the web).

~~~
spartango
Spotlight is not local search only, including links to Wikipedia and for web
searches (and even recently viewed pages).

~~~
flatline3
It has links, but _not_ live content fetched from the internet.

------
jellicle
Look, Mark - can I call you Mark? - this idea of yours sucks and you should
flush it down the toilet.

I'm typing this on stock Ubuntu 12.04 and let me describe what your search
does and doesn't do.

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.

Searching for that phrase under Home: "Sorry, there is nothing that matches
your search." (!!!) Fail.

Searching for that phrase under Applications: "Sorry, there are no
applications that match your search." Okay!

Searching for that phrase under Files and Folders: "Sorry, there are no files
or folders that match your search." (!!!) Fail.

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.

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.

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.)

Again, this is stock Ubuntu 12.04.

>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.

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?

~~~
fromhet
The music lens searches thru your music library. When the files containing the
music are outside of the library, they are treated as files, not as songs. Is
it really so strange?

~~~
nightpool
How do you define "Music library"? Is it a set of all files imported to
rhythmbox? But what if I use Banshee? Or, as I've been doing for the past few
months, I use cvlc with files and folders typed on the commamd line? What
would you consider my music library then? The whole concept of a music library
seems passing strange in a world where files are everything.

~~~
zanny
Windows has libraries for stuff. It isn't very intuitive and I'm not trying to
justify it, but that is probably where the sentiment comes from.

------
vibrunazo
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.

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").

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.

~~~
fromhet
The first result when I googled "donate ubuntu" was this link:
<http://www.ubuntu.com/community/get-involved/donate>

It's not super hard to do. If we all gave them $20 for each new version
(something they truly deserve) they would not be in dire straits.

~~~
flatline3
It would be far easier if they simply sold the new version.

Relying on the good graces of the user population hasn't prevented them from
integrating Amazon advertisements, and won't likely prevent other bad
decisions in the future.

~~~
rplnt
Your comment reminded me of other Ubuntu incident - when they were stealing
profit from Banshee (they changed banshee's amazon ref id to ubuntu's).

~~~
trhtrsh
it's a bit presumptious to say who "owns" that profit, as both pieces are open
source software that depend on each other for the music experience.

~~~
FrankBooth
Without the Banshee developers, Ubuntu wouldn't have Banshee to ship, so it's
not particularly debatable who deserves the lion's share. Especially
considering Ubuntu's incredibly weak contributions to open source in general.
What Ubuntu did there was tacky. If they had handled it better (discussing it
with upstream and working out a profit sharing scheme), at least it would've
been slightly less disgusting.

------
f4stjack
"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."

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.

Privacy and Functionality are two different spheres, I can't accept something
very functional if it invades my privacy.

~~~
gvb
You installed Ubuntu. How do you know that Ubuntu _itself_ and all of the
programs _that run as root_ that you installed as part of Ubuntu are not
malicious?

A: Trust.

If you are installing updates from Ubuntu (and you should be), how to do you
know apt-get/dpkg _that you run as root, but came from Ubuntu_ is not
malicious? How do you know that the programs that apt-get just installed _that
run as root_ are not malicious?

A: Trust.

~~~
f4stjack
Nope. Not trust, because they are open source and I can read the source code
and I do read source code. Although this is kinda derailing my argument. I am
saying, they don't have my data - not voluntarily if I accept your
argumentation and assume they are collecting it without my consent, if this is
the case; this will open a can of worms.

~~~
pilif
Unless you compile the whole distro and all updates on your own, you still
have to trust Ubuntu that the code they ship was actually built from source
packages unmodified from the one you just checked.

So you do have to trust them. They could easily have shipped a version of
Chrome that sends the browsing history (or your password keychain) to
Canonical while shipping source code that doesn't contain that feature.

Of course this doesn't change the fact that I really do want my OS ad-free. It
does mean however that I trust them not to violate their promises as well as
not to ship spyware.

If it gets out that they did either, it's the moment that everybody stops
using Ubuntu which really doesn't help them in their (apparently perceived
evil) monetization schemes.

~~~
takluyver
That's not just trust in them, it's partly trust in the community that if they
shipped a malicious browser, say, someone would notice and cry foul.

Offering source that doesn't match the binaries doesn't stop someone
monitoring their own network traffic. And if you recompile the binaries with
the same settings, the hashes should match.

------
comice
"These are not ads because they are not paid placement, they are
straightforward Amazon search results for your search."

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)

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.

If Amazon didn't offer an affiliate scheme, would Ubuntu still be so keen to
integrate their search results in the same way?

~~~
tomrod
This is my thought exactly.

------
fierarul
>These are results from underlying scopes, surfaced to the Home lens, because
you didn’t narrow the scope to a specific, well scope.

This sounds kinda buzzword-ish and ignores the fact that people, basically,
don't need Dash to do any of that stuff.

>Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already.

Chilling.

All I trust Ubuntu is they don't intentionally leak data. It's not like I
store it on their hard drives.

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.

~~~
Create
sounds like famous last words:

"You have zero privacy anyway," Scott McNealy told a group of reporters

-8<\------

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

-8<\------------------

"Twenty minutes compared to never, that's a lot. Our customer, the (U.S.)
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), would get very upset (if) somebody looks in
their database," Ellison said.

-8<\----------------------

Note, that S3 and EC2 have all the right certifications too.

------
tomp
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&apps. Really? We're that deep
in the consumerism mindset that any search I do you're immediately trying to
sell me something?

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.

~~~
tatsuke95
> _"We're that deep in the consumerism mindset that any search I do you're
> immediately trying to sell me something?"_

I use Amazon for reviews on basically every consumer product out there, but
especially for movies and books. And between "Lists", "So You'd Like To's" and
the ability to browse the reviews of users with common tastes, it's a _great_
recommendation and discovery tool. If anyone uses one better, I'd love to see
it!

So while I'm not sure about _integration_ in an OS, Amazon is a very useful
site for garnering information on all kinds of things. Especially so since
they _can't_ , as a non-American, sell me half the products I look up.

------
quesera
Given the wide array of Linux distro options, why would anyone choose one with
this sort of junk included?

Remember all the hate for Windows with crapware preinstalled? (they stopped
doing that, right?) How is this less distasteful?

Why would anyone download Ubuntu _avec_ crap when Ubuntu _sans_ crap will be
available via BitTorrent within hrs after release? Someone will fix this bug,
obviously, immediately.

Clearly, Shuttleworth is getting tired of self-financing his charitable
enterprise. But what is he thinking?

Disclaimer: I don't always run FOSS Unix, but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.

~~~
takluyver
> Why would anyone download Ubuntu avec crap when Ubuntu sans crap will be
> available via BitTorrent within hrs after release?

Because, even if they do things like this, I'd trust an official image more
than some file off Bittorrent. Of course, someone could start (another) fork,
but getting momentum and name recognition takes time.

------
cs702
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. _The source of
conflict_ , I believe, is that Canonical is trying to serve three distinct
market segments which will react very differently to the new feature:

* Enterprise customers deploying hundreds or thousands of desktops. They will _love_ 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.

* Regular people -- that is, the kind of people who don't even know about HN. These people will also _love_ 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.

* 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.

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.

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?

~~~
bluedanieru
Are power users such a small segment? The other two customers you're talking
about here are very mythological in nature afaict. Enterprise? Where?
Enterprise customers don't install the latest Ubuntu distro firmwide - they
are just getting Windows 7 (maybe). They don't do Linux on the desktop by
definition. And show me a 'regular user' whose Ubuntu install wasn't courtesy
of some zealous grandson or nephew or boy/girlfriend or whatever.

Seriously, I want to know who these people are who have been using Windows
their whole life, and who aren't technical, who at best could just barely grok
that you can't run Windows apps on Linux, and who nevertheless are going ahead
and installing this piece of shit. I want to meet one of these people and take
their picture because, to me, it would like having my picture taken with a
fucking unicorn. While you're at it, let's have a tablet running Unity that
isn't someone's science project. Because all of this seems to figure a great
deal in justifying the reasoning behind whatever wrong decision at Canonical
folks are trying to justify this release.

Or, you know, every time Mark shits on the floor with this sort of thing we
can try to figure out why it's actually not so bad after all.

Ubuntu was great back when Canonical was bringing innovation that benefited
actual existing Linux users (your so-called 'power users') by smoothing the
rough edges, with a view toward making it easier for people to make the switch
to a Linux desktop. Somewhere along the way they lost the plot, and now it's
just gimmicks and bullshit. Gimmicks and bullshit that are supposed to attract
the layperson but haven't, and instead just piss off the people already using
the thing (who are flocking to other distros btw).

~~~
thebigshane
Your point (which I agree with) would have been better made if you left it at
the first paragraph. It quickly turned into an emotional rant.

------
michaelhoffman
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.

~~~
oelmekki
Especially when you conclude with a troll-esque affirmation like "we are root
on your system anyway".

------
motters
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.

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.

------
spinchange
As much as I admire and appreciate Ubuntu and all the hard work, time, and
money Shuttleworth & 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.

------
jiggy2011
The problem is that I don't have enough screen real estate to have a search
function that is literally "search everything for X".

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?

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?

I run software programs probably 100x-1000x more than I do online shopping for
anything.

Sure you _can_ 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".

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.

------
tomrod
Rather than address concerns, straight up snark on Twitter.
<https://mobile.twitter.com/ubuntu/tweets>

------
comice
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?

Or did someone say "How can we get affiliate links into Ubuntu as a source of
income?"

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.

------
takluyver
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.

I have opened a bug report for this:
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-lens-
shoppin...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-lens-
shopping/+bug/1054776)

~~~
recoiledsnake
You're making a big assumption about the "problems". Ubuntu's problem is to
make revenue, making it a separate lens will cut down the the searches to
Amazon by a huge amount, almost no one will use the new lens, whereas now
everyone is forced to look at Amazon results.

Making it search Amazon by default will raise much much more revenue.

~~~
takluyver
But if users go elsewhere because of this sort of thing, Ubuntu doesn't make
money either.

To be fair, I'm sure many end users won't care. But I think they have a
serious problem with advocates - people like me who would recommend Ubuntu to
others. I already feel less comfortable recommending it if it's going to do
things like this.

------
RexRollman
No thank you sir. No thank you.

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

------
k_bx
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?

------
pasbesoin
Ubuntu: EOL-ed at 12.04?

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

------
nsp
XEX

------
cooldeal
>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.

Wait, so my personal local file search keywords are sent to _both_ Ubuntu and
Amazon? If anything, that's only slightly better than just Amazon having them
along with the IP address.

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.

>Here’s a quick Q&A on the main FUD-points.

FUD? Really? Is he trying to imply the outrage is manufactured by Microsoft or
Oracle?

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?

People are smart enough to pull up a browser to search for things to buy.

~~~
tomrod
He might well have slipped freudian style there, or perhaps doesn't actually
know what Ubuntu does? I'm not up to speed as to whether Mark is a coder or a
business man only.

~~~
hexis
He's a coder and a businessman:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth#Linux_and_FOS...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth#Linux_and_FOSS)

