No longer freedom respecting? I disagree. Its no longer hardcore hacker respecting but it's still free. Canonical has been walking this fine line between being a serious Linux distro and an OS that has the potential for average people to adopt. At this point it seems that they're finding they can't walk that line without some sacrifices and they seem to be going after the "average person" market in a lot of ways.

As it relates to freedom, Ubuntu is still open source and licensed under a free license. Technically it does qualify as being free software. The Amazon results may not be something a lot of us like (including myself) but anyone is free to remove that functionality from the OS.

If you choose an OS based on philosophy then I'm not sure that Ubuntu has been on your side for some years now. I don't agree that Ubuntu isn't freedom respecting but I do agree that it probably isn't for you and people like you.