[Bug 305905] Re: start.ubuntu Google CSE has fewer features

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

This all started more than one year ago; for one year I tried to get to
something, because I liked and like ubuntu. I do not think canonical or
ubuntu are evil entities, but the matter of the home page, which is
probably the application that every ubuntu user will use more frequently
every day, is not handled in the right way and your users are not aware
of that.

I do not want to "insinuate" anything. If I am wrong, I will just stand
corrected. However, from your words above I don't understand if I got
what a CSE is wrong, or you don't even know what it is. What I will
state now is based on obious facts that everyone can verify, so if they
are not true, just explain me why.

I looked at the form action URL in the default ubuntu firefox home page

http://start.ubuntu.com/9.10/

The source code of the page reads

      <form action="http://www.google.com/cse"

so the submit URL is not www.google.com, but rather www.google.com/cse.
It is certainly TRUE that googe is the provider of both services, but as
far as I know they are rather different services.

The "cse" or "custom search engine" service that you use in the home
page permits a third party (in this case ubuntu) to configure the search
engine, deciding what sites are indexed and what not, and perhaps also
to alter the order in which results are presented. Moreover, the use of
the CSE seems related to the presence of much more prominent advertising
in the results page, which should generate revenue for the third party
in question.

I do not think it is bad to make revenue for an open source project that
way, but users should know. This is a matter of transparency, you may
have a different position, but you should at least agree that "cse" and
"/" are two different google pages.

The "cse" is probably aimed at providing custom search engines that
index single web sites (like most other distributions do) and not to
provide an alternative to google, but of course you may use it like
that.

What you can not do is to prove to users what your configuration of the
CSE is. Therefore, in my opinion you should add a disclaimer somewhere,
and link it in the 9.10 start page.

-- 
start.ubuntu Google CSE has fewer features
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/305905
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