Canonical has differentiated and distinguished itself in the world of open source software for its products and innovations, as well as for having managed to make Ubuntu a mass operating system. Some like the FSF were unhappy with some Ubuntu moves that affected the freedom or privacy of users, but now Canonical has wanted to take a step back.
On the Linux Ubuntu distribution, your online search will not be sent to Canonical by default. The option that sends this type of data will be disabled by default as of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and not enabled by default as it happens in the current and past versions since this system was introduced that violates the privacy of users in Ubuntu 12.10, becoming the most controversial functionality in the history of the distro for the benefit of Amazon.
Mark Shuttleworth, the billionaire behind Canonical, was able to get some income from Amazon that you could invest in Ubuntu development. This is undoubtedly good for the users of this platform, but it violates the right to privacy that is so little respected today in the world of computing with all the software that contains hidden functionalities either for the benefit of governments, agencies of espionage or simply to sell your information to third parties and get a financial profit from it.
Now this is going to stop and the functionality, which until now seemed activated by default and was difficult to deactivate, will no longer be there. The option made all the searches that were made on the Internet be shared and this should be illegal as well pointed out Richard Stallman and groups like the EFF who were very critical with Ubuntu and Canonical. Little by little Canonical has been refining the system, encrypting the content, making it anonymous and even withdrawing the search on Amazon, but now it is taking another step ... that is welcome.
The reason, that the programmers are working on Unity 8 and this new interface completely changes the search and will offer us better control.