Comments on: UPDATED: Yahoo! to become Firefox’s default search engine on Ubuntu

By: Kirk M

Kirk M — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:38:04 +0000

I have to agree that Ubuntu does have it’s inherent problems and it’s really not ready to go “out of the box” without a bit of tweaking (so what OS is?). But overall, it’s a fine release and it’s a simple thing to change the default home page and search engine in Firefox. I do that all the time anyway as I prefer the generic Google Home page rather than the Ubuntu flavored one.

With that said, I eventually went from Ubuntu to Linux Mint (currently the latest KDE CE) as the Mint developers spend a great deal of time fixing the inherent bugs found in Ubuntu and adding their own tools which improve on some of the standard tools provided by Ubuntu, add the codecs needed to “make things just work” and generally polish the overall distro up before release.

Which all means that Firefox in Linux Mint 9 will probably have Yahoo set as the default search engine in Firefox as well (that is, if the Mint developers don’t change it back to a mint flavored Google which they might do). So I’ll change it to what I want as usual.

I try not to allow the politics and business dealings behind any one distro affect me any. If I did I probably wouldn’t use any of the major distros at all. They make their decisions and if I don’t like the results I’ll post my opinion on the appropriate forum and then change things back the way I like them.

By: Anders

Anders — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:04:09 +0000

For the longest time, my Firefox on Ubuntu was called Shiretoko, i.e. rebranded. I wonder if they will do something like this again to evade legal complications with Mozilla/Google.

By: Mohan

Mohan — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:03:28 +0000

I am Ubuntu user have been for 5 years now and I don’t see the problem considering it’s like two clicks to change it.

By: Stan

Stan — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:39:05 +0000

@Jesse:”and with Firebird before that which led to Firebird, the web browser, being renamed to Firefox” doesn’t make any sense, I think he means “and with Phoenix before that which led to Firebird, the web browser, being renamed to Firefox”.

By: Percy Cabello

Percy Cabello — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:19:48 +0000

Thanks for the tip! I’ve updated the article.

By: Sinani201

Sinani201 — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:39:22 +0000

NOOO!

Looks like Yahoo is being evil again… I hate it when they pay everyone to include their crappy search engine into products. You should put in a search engine ballet similar to the EU Win7 for browsers so that people can choose their search engine. But Yahoo? People who are switching to Ubuntu will only give it a mark down for that.

By: Ken Saunders

Ken Saunders — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:52:36 +0000

Um, so they’ll pretty much going to be using Bing?
That will go over well with users.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:49:55 +0000

@Stan: The browser formerly known as Phoenix was renamed due to a naming conflict with a commercial BIOS. The new name was Firebird, which means pretty much the same thing and didn’t conflict with any commercial products – but it did conflict with the Firebird database (based on Borland’s open-sourced InterBase). Since the database already had some history, Mozilla did the right thing (after taking some heat – see http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_Mozilla0) and found another name that wasn’t already taken.

A bit painful at the time, but I think it worked out in the end. Firefox is a great name – unique, brief, and memorable.

By: darkhole

darkhole — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:45:42 +0000

Hey, check this out:
http://identi.ca/conversation/20122475

A really great conversation. Jono said something about Mozilla’s position:
http://identi.ca/notice/20126366

By: Dwight Stegall

Dwight Stegall — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:33:17 +0000

Sticking newbies with a crappy search engine like Yahoo? Why do they hate newbies so much? :)

By: Feech

Feech — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:04:22 +0000

I’ll bet another firefox fork is along the way. (I doubt ubuntu will use iceweasel.)

By: Stan

Stan — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:35:04 +0000

“Firebird before that which led to Firebird, the web browser, being renamed to Firefox.”
Phoenix you mean?