Dump Google?

[Michael Loftis]

--On Friday, September 10, 2010 7:58 PM -0700 Jordan <jordanhewi at gmail.com> 
wrote:

> Dear Ubuntu Developers,
>
> I'm not sure if I'm the first person to suggest this, but lately
> Google's reputation has diminished, especially with talk of them being
> Big Brother (yes, I know what server my email's on).  Why not drop
> Google and go for a more private search engine?
>
> I know of a few underdogs such as Startpage and Yauba (I know of one
> more whose name I forgot...they have plans for an email system).
> Probably they would be happy to form an alliance with Ubuntu.
>
> I'm thinking large-picture here.  Ubuntu's main attraction is it's
> security and privacy (not requiring users to register, for instance).
> With the technology news on Google and large search engines, I think we
> should jump on the band wagon to avoid Google. What do you say?
>

I don't know that Ubuntu (or any particular Linux distro) main attraction 
is either of those.  But it certainly is choice.  Ubuntu could provide more 
choice out of the box.  Whatever choice Ubuntu makes it would also have to 
be endorsed by it's users.  The results would have to be good and timely, 
just picking a different search engine to "jump on the band wagon" is 
probably a bad idea.  The new engine, whatever chosen, would have to be 
fairly robust as well since Ubuntu represents a non-trivial share of users, 
and, Ubuntu users I'm sure also expect things to work well.  In fact I'd 
say choice, and working well, as well as having the latest updates are the 
three highest expectations of Ubuntu users as a whole.  Security and 
privacy also figure in the top five reasons as well I'm sure, and different 
users will have different priorities.