Choice of search engine on Android nuked by “Anonymous Coward” (2009)

For the young whippersnappers, "anonymous coward" comes from Slashdot, where it was the name for anonymous posters.

What an interesting way to go about making an uncomfortable but important decision. This is Google's platform and they should do with it what they want, it's incredible how much search has changed our interaction with our phone. There isn't a day that goes by where I'm not finding everything I need with a quick google search.

If google doesn't control the searches end to end on android they would have missed out on some good innovations like instant apps and google now. I love that this is one aspect of this totalitarian control they didn't compromise on, cuz it's keeping them in the dominant position with a good flow of data coming in!

This is why I love open source (as in source-available, not necessarily free-software). Transparency trumps everything.

Whoever chose to commit anonymously (or gave the order to) knew they were doing something shitty and didn't feel comfortable doing it "in public".

It doesn't prevent things like that from happening but it makes you question if it's the right thing to do. Sometimes that's the best we can hope for.

There used to be a search engine switcher view, but google needed there to be only one correct way of searching the web. so somebody just committed this joke from Slashdot where anons are "anonymous cowards" to remove that previously available option to change engine.

>Why did this commit get accepted in the commit history tree published at android.googlesource.com?

As opposed to what? Do you expect them to maintain an alternate tree without the change that doesn't match published binaries?