Yahoo buys itself a ticket for the Ubuntu train

The watchful eyes at Phoronix noticed that a pair of small changes were announced yesterday on the Ubuntu dev list. Both will affect the browser in Lucid Lynx -- and both have to do with search.

The more subtle of the two is a small tweak within Firefox. When a user changes his or her default search, the Ubuntu start page's search box will send queries to that provider. While most users may never see this in action (just about everyone sets a custom home page, right?), it's a nice change and keeps the search experience consistent.

Now on to the not-so-subtle change.

In the same post, Canonical's Rick Spencer also announced that a revenue sharing deal has been reached and Yahoo! will replace Google as the default search option. Spencer stresses that the deal in no way affects the user's ability to change to a different engine and I'm fairly confident that most Ubuntu users are savvy enough to know how to do that.

The deal will provide additional income for Canonical -- which Spencer says will "will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Platform." That's certainly good news. After all, if you allow users to download your OS for free, it's fairly critical to have alternative revenue streams to fuel your business.

One reply on the dev thread noted that it would be nice for Yahoo! to remove the "unsupported OS" warning from Yahoo! Mail since they're snuggling up to Linux. Seems like a good idea to me...

Tags: deals, firefox, search, ubuntu, yahoo