Canonical sure needs money. Before this, the deal was that Ubuntu is free in both ways and Canoncial tries to earn money with support-contracts for corporations. That wasn't succesful enough (which maybe isn't too surprising with established forces like Redhat already in the market), so Ubuntu One marked a new approach, to monetize the wide distribution of Ubuntu by offering paid services (but also a free offer). The try to participate on the in-app-purchases goes in the same direction.
So far, there was a balance. Unity in itself can be seen as a tipping point, where Canoncial tried to steer Ubuntu in one direction without even trying to align that with the community. That alone made Unity a hard sell for established ubuntu-users, its bad state in the beginning didn't help.
And now ads. Ads are seldom in the best interest of the user. Sometimes they are, when they offer exactly the product the customer searched for (i once got a cheaper dsl-connection because i arrived via a google-ad when i searched for dsl connections, for that i was thankful). In the Unity dash, the user is trying to start a program or to open a file of his, so it is almost guaranteed that the ad will never be what the user searches for.
So all this default does is enabling a probably very small revenue-stream to canonical, while cluttering the dash and irritating users by givem them the feeling that this ubuntu-desktop is doing strange things not in their control (even though they can disable it, a new user won't know how and even if he did, the system did something unexpected, which will bother him).
I hope there are better ways to monetize (maybe donations, paid features like the already existing ones, integrating google music, an ubuntu-tablet, facebook-integration paid for by facebook, certified hardware - but sure not simple ads -.-).
Canonical sure needs money. Before this, the deal was that Ubuntu is free in both ways and Canoncial tries to earn money with support-contracts for corporations. That wasn't succesful enough (which maybe isn't too surprising with established forces like Redhat already in the market), so Ubuntu One marked a new approach, to monetize the wide distribution of Ubuntu by offering paid services (but also a free offer). The try to participate on the in-app-purchases goes in the same direction.
So far, there was a balance. Unity in itself can be seen as a tipping point, where Canoncial tried to steer Ubuntu in one direction without even trying to align that with the community. That alone made Unity a hard sell for established ubuntu-users, its bad state in the beginning didn't help.
And now ads. Ads are seldom in the best interest of the user. Sometimes they are, when they offer exactly the product the customer searched for (i once got a cheaper dsl-connection because i arrived via a google-ad when i searched for dsl connections, for that i was thankful). In the Unity dash, the user is trying to start a program or to open a file of his, so it is almost guaranteed that the ad will never be what the user searches for.
So all this default does is enabling a probably very small revenue-stream to canonical, while cluttering the dash and irritating users by givem them the feeling that this ubuntu-desktop is doing strange things not in their control (even though they can disable it, a new user won't know how and even if he did, the system did something unexpected, which will bother him).
I hope there are better ways to monetize (maybe donations, paid features like the already existing ones, integrating google music, an ubuntu-tablet, facebook-integration paid for by facebook, certified hardware - but sure not simple ads -.-).