Ubuntu To Make Amazon Product Results ‘Opt-In’ (OMG!Ubuntu)

Ubuntu’s Unity dash search has come under fire for sending search terms to Amazon (and including those results) by default. In future versions of Unity users will explicitly need to opt-in, reports OMG!Ubuntu. “In Unity 8 the search paradigm has shifted towards refinement. Gone is a central ‘home scope’ that tries to do ‘all the things’, at all times, from as many places as possible. Instead, online searches are conducted through a the (rather ridiculously named) “Scopes Scope”. When entering a query here, Unity will recommend Scopes that it thinks can deliver results pertinent to the query. This is the crucial difference: it gives you the choice of Scopes to search; it doesn’t search them for you.” Unity 7 will be used in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS so Amazon searches will still be on by default when that version ships later this month. (Thanks to Paul Wise)