Comment 107 for bug 402767

Good day,

I will explain the reason why I was shocked. Not why A USER was shocked.
It may help the marketing people at Canonical to improve their efforts
to eliminate launchpad bug #000001

The reason why I was shocked is that the new 'google' homepage lacked
functionality that I had on the old 'google' homepage. On the old page
there was a bar with buttons that made it very easy to switch from web
search to image search and video search (and some others that I use less).

To stress this fact, I couldn't care less if Canonical would make money
of my searches or did some aggregate data collection (anonymously I
presume). Actually, I would be happy of they can make money of my
searches for 'Ubuntu 9.04 copy paste functionality third mouse button
vanished' or 'Ubuntu Jaunty Firefox memory problem'. Be my guest!

It's just that I got used to using that one google page for nearly all
my searches and that it had some great buttons that disappeared after an
Ubuntu upgrade. And that it was hard to find the way back. (Hint:
disable multi search add-on in firefox).

That's all I gotta say about that.

John Moser wrote:
> This is a stupid argument. I've read about half of it. Let me
> summarize:
>
> 1. People are shocked at new functionality. Because it breaks old
> functionality. This happens, this is a legitimate complaint; however,
> stop being psycho about it.
>
> 2. People are shocked at the concept of having data collected. This is
> a legitimate argument for data collected about them; however, the data
> being collected here IS ABOUT SOFTWARE. How did a user get to here? Not
> how did Alex get here, but how did A USER get here? More importantly,
> 6,000 searches were performed; how many used the start page, how many
> went to Google.com, how many used the Google search bar?
>
> People are complaining that data is being collected from them, but not
> about them. Meanwhile, in the log files for Google, every search you've
> ever sent shows up with your IP address; they don't analyze it (maybe,
> maybe they do), but they collect it in far more detail than you care to
> complain about.
>
> 3. People are even more shocked that Ubuntu may garner revenue from
> some method the user isn't informed about. Why not be shocked that the
> tiles at the airport are piezoelectric generators that collect
> electricity as you walk? How dare they!
>
>
> Seriously, people, what the hell is your problem? Please explain exactly what threat there is here. What huge violation of your rights is occurring when data you send out across a network winds up on somebody's servers? Especially when said data is concerned with WHAT you did and not WHO did it, and thus the software discards anything that has anything to do with anything other than what part of the screen was clicked (i.e. your IP, your user name, where the hell you came from, etc)?
>
> I read this entire thread as "FIGHT THE POWAH MAN! STICK IT TO THE MAN!
> MAKING MONEY IS BAD! KNOWING ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR USERS IS BAD!"
> Translation: You are a bunch of rabid hippies.
>