Searching for software in the Dash now suggests software that can not be used with Ubuntu

Bug #1053678 reported by Dylan McCall
198
This bug affects 46 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
unity-lens-shopping
New
High
Unassigned
unity-lens-shopping (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
High
John Lenton

Bug Description

Open the dash and type "Adobe Reader". Today, The Highest Priority Result (assuming you do not have Adobe Reader installed) is Adobe Reader for Android on the Amazon app store. (See attached screenshot 1). Clicking the very appealing (and very large, thanks to bug #1053628) icon will open your web browser on this page:
http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Systems-Reader/dp/B004SD5GZ4%3FSubscriptionId%3D0JF9Y4YFAADGVXG0SE82%26tag%3Dchipaca-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB004SD5GZ4

It is easy to imagine a user now, in no particular order:
 - Attempting to "install" the software for their Ubuntu system, via Amazon's Android app store
 - Cursing what he views as an ugly and fragmented process for installing software (even though it really is amazing, as long as we guide people in the right direction!)
 - Being very, very confused and frustrated

So, that's pretty bad. Here's another example:
http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-65158237-Photoshop-CS6/dp/B007R0RKV8%3FSubscriptionId%3D0JF9Y4YFAADGVXG0SE82%26tag%3Dchipaca-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB007R0RKV8

Here, searching the dash for Photoshop results in some pieces of software, all of which cost lots of money. These are all for Windows, but by presenting these applications in the dash, under the header "Other suggestions," we seem to be recommending them. It's quite likely that a user will assume, here, that the software works in Ubuntu.

Finally, I searched for Bastion. Bastion is available for Ubuntu, which is really exciting. However, when I search in the Home lens, the only suggestion is (again) Bastion for Windows, from Amazon.

Suffice it to say, this is misleading and dangerous. Software should probably never appear in the Amazon search, and placing Amazon results in global search — especially while we do no such thing for software in Ubuntu's own repository — needs to be very carefully considered in terms of user experience.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: unity-lens-shopping 6.0.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-15.22-generic 3.5.4
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-15-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.5.2-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Sep 20 14:32:49 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Beta amd64 (20110906)
SourcePackage: unity-lens-shopping
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-08-26 (25 days ago)

Revision history for this message
Dylan McCall (dylanmccall) wrote :
description: updated
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks) wrote :

John, we discussed about it yesterday. Assigning it to you and add to the release team track. Thanks!

Changed in unity-lens-shopping (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → John Lenton (chipaca)
milestone: none → ubuntu-12.10
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks) wrote :

(from what I understand it's the web component which is not doing the filtering, letting the lens shopping affecting, but please retarget)

no longer affects: unity (Ubuntu)
Changed in unity-lens-shopping (Ubuntu Quantal):
importance: Undecided → High
Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)
tags: added: rls-q-incoming
Revision history for this message
Tom Louwrier (tom-louwrier) wrote :

Sorry for being sceptical and probably sarcastic, but I'm sure most people will find a very effective solution with
"sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping".

cheers
Tom

Changed in unity-lens-shopping:
importance: Undecided → High
tags: removed: rls-q-incoming
Revision history for this message
Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco) wrote :

FYI
news.slashdot.org/story/12/10/13/145217/stallman-on-unity-dash-canonical-will-have-to-give-users-data-to-governments
---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

Revision history for this message
Dylan McCall (dylanmccall) wrote :

Hey, can anyone else confirm that this bug seems to be fixed (probably with the current version of the Amazon search proxy)?

no longer affects: unity-lens-shopping (Ubuntu Quantal)
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