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Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

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Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#41

Post by brnt »

sascha_sl wrote: post #30
candiddevmike wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a Chromium bug, not a Debian bug--it's an insidious way to keep Google search as the default.

Reporting that there is a policy is no bug, but maybe there should be a way to signify that it's customized by your software vendor (i.e. signed and keys are compiled in) and that it just sets the default search engine. Chromium does change the message to "This device is managed by " if attached to Chrome Enterprise.

Being "managed by" and loading a policy config do not equate in meaning, unless we let PR departments redefine words.

Moreover, defaulting to Google is also a policy.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#42

Post by RockRobotRock »

rvnx wrote: post #14
bla3 wrote: post #13

DDG is for-profit and serves for the most part Bing results. Why not pick something truly open, like search.marginalia.nu?

Quoted post unavailable.

Why are you spouting off accusations without any evidence? This blind cynicism makes HN a worse place.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#43

Post by kyrra »

Googler, opinions are my own. I don't work on chrome or anything related.

Many companies put out free software to drive people towards their products, and Chrome with Google Search seems to be one of those. As many know, improving and maintaining Chrome is not free, and having Google Search being a default is one part of what helps pay for this work.

Yes, this is Google, yes, this is likely a tiny drop in the bucket for them, but at the same time, it's taking away potential revenue from Google.

If this was some smaller company that produced a product that had some default that pointed to one of their SaaS offerings or the like, there would be potential issues raised over the Debian maintainers changing this default.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#44

Post by fbhabbed »

sascha_sl wrote: post #29
aendruk wrote: post #2

Some unintended consequences: > This change caused my chromium browser to report that it's being managed by my "organization". I thought that my machine was somehow compromised. This is terrifying! I wound up deleting my entire chromium profile before I discovered that the root cause was this DuckDuckGo config change. https://bugs.debian.org/956012

Fedora did this for a while to inject the word "Fedora" into the User Agent. They eventually stopped because users were similarly spooked.

They still do it

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#45

Post by guipsp »

kyrra wrote: post #43

Googler, opinions are my own. I don't work on chrome or anything related. Many companies put out free software to drive people towards their products, and Chrome with Google Search seems to be one of those. As many know, improving and maintaining Chrome is not free, and having Google Search being a default is one part of what helps pay for this work. Yes, this is Google, yes, this is likely a tiny drop in the bucket…

> If this was some smaller company that produced a product that had some default that pointed to one of their SaaS offerings or the like, there would be potential issues raised over the Debian maintainers changing this default.

Well, thankfully this is Google, and not a small company then.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#46

Post by mtmail »

kyrra wrote: post #43

Googler, opinions are my own. I don't work on chrome or anything related. Many companies put out free software to drive people towards their products, and Chrome with Google Search seems to be one of those. As many know, improving and maintaining Chrome is not free, and having Google Search being a default is one part of what helps pay for this work. Yes, this is Google, yes, this is likely a tiny drop in the bucket…

> it's taking away potential revenue from Google.

Google still has 92.5% global market share, 10x more than all other search engines combined https://radar.cloudflare.com/notebooks/searchengines-2022-q1

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#48

Post by silisili »

groovybits wrote: post #26
oblak wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was so cool to have amazon snoop on your presumably local searches...

Citation? Lots of folks misremember how the Unity Home Lens feature actually worked, and that the Ubuntu installer explicitly asked you whether you wanted it enabled. If enabled, there was no presumption of local-only search. It was front and center in your search results, and the affiliate revenue was only collected when you clicked on that Amazon result. Canonical claimed that the search was forwarded to them, and…

I agree that some talk at the time was overblown, most of it even.

That said, it was a braindead idea to begin with. Not one person in existence wants or expects shopping links when searching their computer via a dock like interface. This is meant for applications or files.

When shopping, most are going to research on Google...or perhaps search a category on Amazon itself before choosing a product.

I'd be curious it Ubuntu even made a single sale from that venture.

Re: Debian's Chromium changes default search engine to DDG

#50

Post by bityard »

kyrra wrote: post #43

Googler, opinions are my own. I don't work on chrome or anything related. Many companies put out free software to drive people towards their products, and Chrome with Google Search seems to be one of those. As many know, improving and maintaining Chrome is not free, and having Google Search being a default is one part of what helps pay for this work. Yes, this is Google, yes, this is likely a tiny drop in the bucket…

Chromium isn't just gratis software ("free" has a different meaning), it's open source software. There is no implicit expectation that downstream users can't change it any way want[1] and redistribute the result, that's the whole point of the open source license that Chromium is released under.

1. Within existing legal boundaries, of course

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