Yahoo! will replace Google as the new default search engine in Mozilla Firefox on Ubuntu 10.04 ‘Lucid Lynx’, Canonical has announced.
Canonical’s Rick Spencer, a member of the desktop team, shared news of the change on the Ubuntu developer mailing list earlier today, but stressed it won’t affect users’ ability to change search provider to something else if they so wish.
One area of potential contention is that users upgrading from Ubuntu 9.10 ‘Karmic Koala’ to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS ‘Lucid Lynx’ will see their search engine changed to Yahoo!, irrespective of whether they’ve already manually changed it to something else.
Why change?
Spender says the partnership between Canonical and Yahoo! will provide revenue that can go towards continued funding of the Ubuntu platform and burgeoning ecosystem.
Also in the announcement was a somewhat less dramatic change: the Ubuntu homepage that greets users (in a stock install) will now make use of whatever search engine a user has set in Firefox. Previously it was hardcoded to use Google.
You can read the full announcement here.