Canonical, la empresa que distribuye la distribución de GNU/Linux Ubuntu ha llegado a un acuerdo con Yahoo para instalar como buscador predeterminado en el firefox de su distribución a Yahoo y dejar de utilizar Google.
La noticia no deja de ser sorprendente porque Yahoo comenzó a utilizar el motor de Bing, el buscador de Microsoft y hasta la fecha siempre la página predeterminada de firefox en Ubuntu había sido la de Google, que reportaba unos ingresos extras a la compañía de la Isla de Man.
El cambio será efectivo a partir de la versión 10.04, la siguiente, y todavía no se sabe si será con caracter retroactivo o no, pero esta decisión hace suponer que Yahoo ha sido capaz de superar la oferta de Google en cuanto a pagos por publicidad, lo que significa un gran avance en el mundo de la publicidad online, y por supuesto para Canonical.
Esto ha sido anunciado por Rick Spencer, el lider del Canonical’s desktop team, en la lista pública de Ubuntu, copio el mensaje:
Rick Spencer rick.spencer at canonical.com
Tue Jan 26 20:03:01 GMT 2010
All -
I am writing to apprise you of two small but important changes coming to
Firefox in Lucid. I have asked the desktop team to start preparing
these changes to make them available in Lucid as soon as reasonably
possible. Probably on the order of weeks.
Change #1
In Lucid, the default home page will respect the search provider
settings that you have set in the "Chrome". (The "Chrome" is Mozilla's
term for the little search box to the upper right, reachable by
control-K, for instance). For Lucid, this will definitely work for
switching between Google and Yahoo!, we don't yet know what other
providers will be in scope for Lucid. If a user has Google set as their
search provider,they will have exactly the experience they do today. If
they switch to Yahoo!, the default home page will switch to using a
Yahoo! search. If they switch back to Google, the default home page will
switch back to using the Google search, exactly like today. Searching
from Chrome will continue to work exactly as it does today.
Change #2
Change #2 is changing the default search provider in Firefox to Yahoo!
Note that this won't in any way effect the ability of a user to choose
and use the search provider of their choice. It's literally 2 easily
discoverable clicks to change this setting, a simple matter of switching
to that search provider in the chrome by clicking on the icon and
choosing the desired provider. Note also that Yahoo! does not share any
personally identifiable or usage information.
Why?
I am pursuing this change because Canonical has negotiated a revenue
sharing deal with Yahoo! and this revenue will help Canonical to provide
developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and
the Ubuntu Platform. This change will help provide these resources as
well as continuing to respect our user's default search across Firefox.
Cheers, Rick
Ahora habrá que ver cómo reaccionan los usuarios, porque cambiar estas opciones de Firefox es realmente fácil y eso supondría un importante revés para Canonical y la gran mayoría de los usuarios decidieran hacer eso.
El tiempo lo dirá.
Vía: Arstechnica