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Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed

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Re: Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed

#41

Post by mceachen »

avolcano wrote: post #11

Honestly, if Ubuntu dropped their ridiculous, underdeveloped, undersupported Ubuntu One services and partnered with Amazon to integrate theirs (Cloud Player/Cloud Drive/etc), that would be a MAJOR improvement for both them and the end-user. Excellent cross-platform cloud services and marketplaces integrated with the OS would be great for bringing less-technical users to the platform in the wake of the proposed "Windo…

But converting Ubuntu One to using Amazon services wouldn't be an affiliate deal, presumably, right? That would be a high-level, "we'll shut down a competitor to EC2/S3/… if you pay us X MM/year" sort of thing. It would also endanger their just-released-10-days-ago music store, if Amazon (their new X MM/year revenue stream), comes to them and asks forcefully.

An affiliate deal seems to make a much lighter impact to Ubuntu's ability to make independent decisions, in part because the revenue stream is less and also because the service is somewhat fungible–Ubuntu can switch to another online retailer (or suite of retailers).

Also, the perceived switching costs for a consumer to convert from Ubuntu One to Cloud Drive is going to be a helluva lot higher than `sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping` (unless they make ubuntu-desktop a dependent package, making apt return a scary message)

Re: Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed

#42

Post by comice »

Whether you like the ad-supported model or not, this is just bad UI!

Who searches their programs and wants to see matching books and music? I could understand listing other software for sale, but this is daft.

I doubt they'll get anything but complaints about this and it'll go away.

Re: Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed

#44

Post by comice »

In fact, I just realised that I really like Ubuntu and would happily make a monthly donation to support it (and can afford to) but I've never seen anything that suggested I do so.

I can't find any hints on ubuntu.com on how to donate (though they have a shop, I don't want any "swag").

Shuttleworth has always said he wants to make it a viable business; perhaps he's worried people would donate instead of having their business buy support (or whatever). Hrm.

EDIT: I searched their site and found the donate page. It doesn't seem to be linked from anywhere; only discoverable by using search.

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/get-involved/donate

Re: Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed

#46

Post by bashzor »

postfuturist wrote: post #26
bashzor wrote: post #2

What the hell... I'll never use Ubuntu again. Or well, at least not for a while, even after it's removed. They call this "free software"?

What about Firefox which has shipped with Google search default since forever, which Google pays Mozilla for, which Google makes money on? Will you never use Firefox again?

Hmm, that's a valid point. I just have the idea of Linux distributions as being completely free and non-profit oriented. Also I'm used to the OS having no ads by itself, only on webpages. Guess I overreacted.

Re: Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed

#48

Post by CrazedGeek »

comice wrote: post #42

Whether you like the ad-supported model or not, this is just bad UI! Who searches their programs and wants to see matching books and music? I could understand listing other software for sale, but this is daft. I doubt they'll get anything but complaints about this and it'll go away.

The whole Unity search thing is based around searching -everything-, not just programs, in a manner akin to Spotlight or Android's search. This isn't a radical shift on the UI end.

Re: Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed

#49

Post by kintamanimatt »

taw9 wrote: post #45

Gawd. Unity, and now this garbage. Should be interesting to see how Mint does...

Mint user here.

Mint used to set Firefox's default search engine a customized (read: craptastic) version of Google that's designed to rake in the ad revenue. I wouldn't have a problem with it if it wasn't utterly useless and ugly as sin. (It looked like the Google site search for webmasters.)

Now the default search engine is DuckDuckGo. I have no idea if they have a revshare agreement with them.

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