Amazon search results in the Dash
markshuttleworth.com
markshuttleworth.com
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.
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).
"Right now, it’s not dynamically choosing what to search, it’s just searching local scopes and Amazon, but it will get smarter over time."
It does. There's at least some integration with Google Docs and Flickr. If you go to "Online Accounts" -> Add account, there's a dropdown menu where you can choose to view accounts which integrate specifically with the dash. Though I'm not sure if it's there by default in 12.04 or is it a remnant of my failed attempt to install a preview of that feature from some PPA.
Anyway, dash can integrate with your online accounts, not just Aamazon's store. You can then search through your Flickr photos and Google Docs straight from the dash.
The slippery slope is supposed to be a logical fallacy, but in cases where like this, it is very difficult to argue against.
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?
I switched to Arch a long time and never looked back, but these changes only enhance the need for an easy to deploy and manage distro to take Ubuntu's place in education/business settings and for those who are new to Linux.
It seems so.
Also:
> Searching for that phrase under Files and Folders: "Sorry, there are no files or folders that match your search."
I am working on a search utility at this moment.
The first thing you want to do is figure what you're doing and adjust to your user's style rather than forcing them to adjust to your application's ideas. That is one key to a "it just works" application. Anything else is more-or-less stuck in the nineties.
But that isn't the case. They don't come up anywhere.
And the point is that there is nothing wrong with commercializing your file search system ... once it works, TO THE DEGREE THAT IT WORKS.
If you are only lightly searching local files, then sending the user to a paid ad is bunk. If you know you've heavily searched the local drive and given some easy result too, then adding a paid ad would acceptable, maybe even useful. Look at Google, you've got a good example to follow. People don't hate Google but they'll hate this crap. OK?
On the other hand, Ubuntu is mostly marketing. They actually want people to use their software. This apologist sentiment so typical of Linux advocates won't work here.
You can't make statements like that and then say "it's free, don't complain".
In any case, the product I might pay for has nothikng to do with the WM. It's a great package manager with timely updated. All this moving of the cheese, for me, mlstly distracts from the core service I'm looking for. (same deal with Apple/Microsoft.)
Other than that - people just like to hate. There is no solution to it.
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.
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.
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.
How would they do that without breaking user experience? (and gpl licence).
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.
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.
I guess their apps could start uploading stuff, but people will figure out pretty soon Ubuntu has/is trojans.
What we are talking here is about an intentional privacy leak which is brushed off as if they can do anything they please just because they make the distro.
There are different layers. I can trust them with the binaries but not with anything else. Or I can trust them with Ubuntu One, but only with what I put there. Or I can trust them sending all the queries to Amazon.
It's a continuum but implying that one level of trust involves everything else is naive.
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.
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.
Applied to this situation I could see my queries going to canonical's servers but I have no idea what happens then. That's only trust and no control.
What if Ubuntu uploaded some phrases from your local documents to show you better results or ads? Is that acceptable? What about uploading entire documents, keystrokes, Google search terms etc. to better target ads?
You trust them enough to run their entire OS right? What if it was Microsoft that did this to improve Bing instead of Ubuntu? Why are so many people running Windows if they don't trust Microsoft already?
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?
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.
"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.
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.
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.
It's been years since I have magnatune tab in amarok, I never used it. Paid services, gtfo my applications. I know where you are if I need you.
It's very clear to me that Ubuntu is targeting mainstream users. The type of users who don't consider where their "search data" is going. They just see that instead of going to Google, they can click the Ubuntu dash and search from there for anything - files, music, products, or just vanilla web searches.
What Ubuntu is doing here will certainly piss off hackers, but mainstream users? It's probably not going to bother them much. They might even find it convenient.
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.
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.
My days of being willing to google around for "how do I install program X version A in distro Y version Z" to install an MP3 player or whatever are long over.
* 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?
Not sure about regular users either, "I'm trying to run this program my grandson told me to run why does it keep sending me to amazon?"
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).
I agree with this sentiment. It's something that has been going on for a long time. Even as far back as 2006, Canonical and the Ubuntu community seemed (to me, anyway) to be overly focused on convincing my mom to use Linux.
But here's the problem: my mom doesn't care what OS her computer runs as long as she can check her email. She doesn't care that she can hit the Windows key and search for stuff (she doesn't even know what that funny key does).
Traditional desktop Linux is for power users. Plain and simple. Everyone will be a lot happier once we all accept that fact.
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> it pays us to make your Amazon journey get off to a faster start
Pays how then? Indeed, this needs to be an opt-in feature. But then, as slick as Ubuntu can make it, one has to use Unity for this correct? So those who opt to use a superior (for them) DE should be unaffected?
Is Mark trying to kill Unity then?
I like how he was dismissing the concerns as FUD. I wish he just said it was about money, since it hard to employ 500 people to work on Ubuntu, instead of making it sound like Ubuntu is trying to enhance the user experience by forcing Amazon searches on people.
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.
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.
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.
I have opened a bug report for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-lens-shoppin...
Making it search Amazon by default will raise much much more revenue.
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.
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.
There are many cases where code controlled by Canonical runs with root privileges: The installer, the package system, a whole host of daemons (that usually drop-privileges after starting but still, they start as root). Every time you install a package, that package can run arbitrary code with root privileges -- this is why you shouldn't install package archives / PPAs you don't trust.
Basically what he meant was you place ultimate trust in Canonical by letting them control every single binary on your machine.