1492948 - Improve default engine detection for preventing duplicates from WebExtensions

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Search, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

We currently disallow overriding builtin engines by a webextension.  However, we rely on the engine name to do this.  We should consider enhancing this.  One idea might be to detect exact domain matches:

given an builtin engine using test.com

if name matches or domain matches /www.?test.com/
  use builtin engine

This would still allow subdomain.test.com to be added by an extension since we do not have a builtin that specifically uses the subdomain.  An example of this in real world would be a Smile extension adding smile.amazon.com when we only build in the default amazon.com.  (I'm also assuming verifying domain owner for such an extension).

Comment 1

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

@mkaply, what do you think of this?

Comment 2

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

I don't think we're trying to completely prevent people from installing other engines for our built-in engine domains.

There are legitimate reasons for other search engines to those domains (safe search comes to mind). 

DuckDuckgo also has a ton of other options for adding search engines.

See:

https://mycroftproject.com/google-search-plugins.html

Comment 3

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

This is really an issue in searchservice