My initial reaction to non-local search results in the Dash by default was one of dismay, but after reading this post by Shuttleworth, I've decided to reserve judgment until Canonical has worked out all the kinks. The source of conflict, I believe, is that Canonical is trying to serve three distinct market segments which will react very differently to the new feature:
* Enterprise customers deploying hundreds or thousands of desktops. They will love this feature, because it will allow them to customize which external and internal online sources employees will be able to search, and then they will be able to track all employee searches.
* Regular people -- that is, the kind of people who don't even know about HN. These people will also love non-local search in the Dash. They already search for everything on Google, buy everything through Amazon, and readily hand over all their intimate, personal information to FaceBook... without ever giving their own privacy a second thought.
* Power users who're aware of the privacy issues involved. Virtually everyone in this market segment, including me, feels strongly that non-local search should be offered only as an opt-in feature, if at all.
Viewed in this light, Canonical's decision to implement non-local search can at least be understood: they're trying to make their customers happy, but they've unintentionally pissed off the smallest of the three market segments above: power users. (Sorry for the harsh language; I can think of no better way to convey how a lot of Ubuntu power users feel about this.) Alas, power users may be the smallest of the three market segments above, but they have disproportionate influence over the other two. Disregarding the concerns of power users may not be a good idea in the long run.
In retrospect, Canonical could have -- indeed, should have -- handled the announcement of this feature much better. There was really no announcement; the news was just 'dumped' on the community on a third-party blog. Is this really how Canonical wants to treat power users?
Are power users such a small segment? The other two customers you're talking about here are very mythological in nature afaict. Enterprise? Where? Enterprise customers don't install the latest Ubuntu distro firmwide - they are just getting Windows 7 (maybe). They don't do Linux on the desktop by definition. And show me a 'regular user' whose Ubuntu install wasn't courtesy of some zealous grandson or nephew or boy/girlfriend or whatever.
Seriously, I want to know who these people are who have been using Windows their whole life, and who aren't technical, who at best could just barely grok that you can't run Windows apps on Linux, and who nevertheless are going ahead and installing this piece of shit. I want to meet one of these people and take their picture because, to me, it would like having my picture taken with a fucking unicorn. While you're at it, let's have a tablet running Unity that isn't someone's science project. Because all of this seems to figure a great deal in justifying the reasoning behind whatever wrong decision at Canonical folks are trying to justify this release.
Or, you know, every time Mark shits on the floor with this sort of thing we can try to figure out why it's actually not so bad after all.
Ubuntu was great back when Canonical was bringing innovation that benefited actual existing Linux users (your so-called 'power users') by smoothing the rough edges, with a view toward making it easier for people to make the switch to a Linux desktop. Somewhere along the way they lost the plot, and now it's just gimmicks and bullshit. Gimmicks and bullshit that are supposed to attract the layperson but haven't, and instead just piss off the people already using the thing (who are flocking to other distros btw).
I agree with this sentiment. It's something that has been going on for a long time. Even as far back as 2006, Canonical and the Ubuntu community seemed (to me, anyway) to be overly focused on convincing my mom to use Linux.
But here's the problem: my mom doesn't care what OS her computer runs as long as she can check her email. She doesn't care that she can hit the Windows key and search for stuff (she doesn't even know what that funny key does).
Traditional desktop Linux is for power users. Plain and simple. Everyone will be a lot happier once we all accept that fact.
* Enterprise customers deploying hundreds or thousands of desktops. They will love this feature, because it will allow them to customize which external and internal online sources employees will be able to search, and then they will be able to track all employee searches.
* Regular people -- that is, the kind of people who don't even know about HN. These people will also love non-local search in the Dash. They already search for everything on Google, buy everything through Amazon, and readily hand over all their intimate, personal information to FaceBook... without ever giving their own privacy a second thought.
* Power users who're aware of the privacy issues involved. Virtually everyone in this market segment, including me, feels strongly that non-local search should be offered only as an opt-in feature, if at all.
Viewed in this light, Canonical's decision to implement non-local search can at least be understood: they're trying to make their customers happy, but they've unintentionally pissed off the smallest of the three market segments above: power users. (Sorry for the harsh language; I can think of no better way to convey how a lot of Ubuntu power users feel about this.) Alas, power users may be the smallest of the three market segments above, but they have disproportionate influence over the other two. Disregarding the concerns of power users may not be a good idea in the long run.
In retrospect, Canonical could have -- indeed, should have -- handled the announcement of this feature much better. There was really no announcement; the news was just 'dumped' on the community on a third-party blog. Is this really how Canonical wants to treat power users?