Well for those of you that are not following the switch to Yahoo! as the proposed default search provider for Ubuntu’s Branded Firefox by default, the decision has been made to revert that change back to the familiar Google Search Provider for the 10.04 release ( and the next Beta CD Images

Several months ago there there was a lot of debate about Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx switching to Yahoo! as the default search provider for Firefox. Well, it seems it was all for nothing, as the final version of Ubuntu 10.04 will ship with Google as the default search provider.

Why? Canonical has negotiated a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo!

Canonical's Rick Spencer has written about two small changes that are happening to Mozilla Firefox in Ubuntu 10.04. The first is the default Ubuntu home-page with its search box in Firefox will now follow whatever the user has set as their default search engine in Firefox. The second change is that Canonical is changing the default search engine for Firefox in Ubuntu to Yahoo.

I also had my doubts initially when I heard Ubuntu Lucid would have Yahoo as the default search provider in Firefox. However, upon a second look I have come to believe that the deal is a win-win situation for both Canonical and Ubuntu users.

On Tuesday, Rick Spencer announced on the Ubuntu developers mailing list that Ubuntu has entered a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo! and will make Yahoo! the default search engine. Well, I believe the community should have been consulted.

Ubuntu is switching the default search from Google to Yahoo!

"...Wikipedia plans to release a new search engine in December called Wikia Search. The hope being that it will be a successful rival to Google and Yahoo! The plan is for anyone with sufficient programming knowledge to contribute to its development, ultimately enhancing the search experience for the consumer..."

So Canonical will make money from Yahoo searches (really Microsoft now with Bing powering Yahoo search) to help fund their efforts.