Thanks. The article states "If a user buys something from Amazon as a result, money is sent to Canonical in the form of affiliate payments." Is the article in error, or has the behavior changed in response to criticism, or do the amazon links have Canonical affiliate codes?
The last seems to be the correct answer - affiliate links are used. I see no evidence Stallman is incorrect and the Shuttleworth blog article does not say they don't use affiliate links.
> The Amazon affiliate referral happens if you've arrived at the Amazon property via a 'tagged' link. Both links clicked via the dash which go to Amazon sites, and the shortcut in the launcher will add the tag. The tag adds a cookie which lasts for 24 hours. If you buy anything during that period, Canonical will get some affiliate revenue.
I'm actually not sure after reading both again -- Shuttleworth seems to imply that they're not doing this for money, but he doesn't explicitly say it.
Either way, these search results are distinctly different from the ads in the launcher that people were talking about a couple weeks ago, but everyone seems to be mixing the two up.
Both can be easily disabled, though. And searching your own machine is still an option.
I find it very hard to believe that anyone, let alone the presumably technologically proficient people at Canonical, would actually think that sponsored search results are useful. When was the last time anyone clicked a sponsored Google result?
The last seems to be the correct answer - affiliate links are used. I see no evidence Stallman is incorrect and the Shuttleworth blog article does not say they don't use affiliate links.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/192725/how-do-i-make-sure-tha...
> The Amazon affiliate referral happens if you've arrived at the Amazon property via a 'tagged' link. Both links clicked via the dash which go to Amazon sites, and the shortcut in the launcher will add the tag. The tag adds a cookie which lasts for 24 hours. If you buy anything during that period, Canonical will get some affiliate revenue.