Ubuntu's Yahoo Affair Lasted Only Three Months

Back in January we reported that Yahoo! would become the default search engine for Mozilla Firefox found in the forthcoming release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. This was because of a revenue sharing agreement between Yahoo and Canonical off the advertisements shown within the search results when using the Yahoo search engine in Ubuntu. Up to this point Google was the default search engine as it is by default with Firefox, but in a last minute change, Google is back in bed with Canonical and will be the premiere search engine for Ubuntu 10.04.

Canonical's Rick Spencer has written a new message to the Ubuntu development list announcing that they are already turning away from the short-lived Yahoo! experience with the Lucid Lynx and in time for the final release, Firefox's default search engine will be Google. No details as to why the flip-flopping took place, other than "It was not our intention to "flap" between providers, but the underlying circumstances can change unpredictably. In this case, choosing Google will be familiar to everybody upgrading from 9.10 to 10.04 and the change will only be visible to those who have been part of the development cycle for 10.04."