1699703 - @amazon searches incorrectly create additional search engine tiles with Remote Setting Top Sites enabled

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Top Sites, defect, P1)

Description

[Maria Heres, inactive, contact Ecosystem QA]

Attachment: search engine 87 remote settings.gif

[Notes]:

• This issue also affects the Sponsored Top Sites experiments. In that case, the search tiles are also generated by clicks on the Sponsored Top Site.

[Affected versions]:

• Firefox Beta 87.0 RC (Build ID: 20210310152336)
• Firefox Nightly 88.0a1 (Build ID: 20210318213531)

[Affected Platforms]:

• Windows 10
• Linux Mint 20
• macOS 10.15

[Prerequisites]:

• Have Firefox 87 open.
• Have browser.search.region set to US.

[Steps to reproduce]:

1. Open a new tab using Firefox.
2. Click the @amazon search tile.
3. Use @amazon to make a search.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 several times.
5. On a New Tab page, dismiss the Amazon search engine tile and any that take its place.
6. Observe the behavior of the tile.

[Expected result]:

• The Amazon tile is dismissed.

[Actual result]:

• Another search engine tile takes its place.
• If dismissed, another search tile takes its place.
• Each additional search tile is created by the number of searches performed.

[Additional Notes]:

• This issue is different on Firefox 86 with Remote Settings Top Sites turned on (browser.topsites.useRemoteSetting set to true), where URL tiles are generated as seen in this recording.
• From discussions on Slack, the different behavior seen on version 86 and 87 was probably introduced by the fix to bug 1696187.
• I am also linking to the behavior seen in the non-remote settings version.
• Attached is a recording of the issue.

Comment 1

[Maria Heres, inactive, contact Ecosystem QA]

This behavior is reproducible in the URL form for locales which do not display the search engine by default (e.g. es-ES, es-MX). If a user manually adds the Amazon search engine to the default build and performs a few searches, dismissing the default Amazon tile will display other Amazon URL tiles as seen in this recording. This behavior was not encountered with Remote Settings turned off (browser.topsites.useRemoteSetting set to false). Tested using Firefox 88.0 RC (Build ID: 20210412175251) on Linux Mint 20 and Windows 10.

Comment 2

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

This was done on purpose in bug 1664502. Since we don't send attribution requests for history entries anymore (bug 1682598), we can restore the old behavior.

Comment 3

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: Bug 1699703 - Re-enable canonical URL conversion for search shortcuts. r=mikedeboer

Comment 4

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/3be15bbb3af9
Re-enable canonical URL conversion for search shortcuts. r=mikedeboer

Comment 5

[Natalia Csoregi [:nataliaCs]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/3be15bbb3af9

Comment 6

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Since the status are different for nightly and release, what's the status for beta?
For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 7

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Is this something we should nominate for Beta uplift?

Comment 8

[Maria Heres, inactive, contact Ecosystem QA]

I have verified that the issue is no longer reproducible for Amazon, the search engine version of the tile is dismissed. For Sponsored top sites other than Amazon, it seems this fix did not affect them, while for Amazon it seems a tile that points to the homepage is displayed after dismissal. I have filed Bug 1711252 for the behavior seen in those cases. Tested on Firefox Nightly 90.0a1 (Build ID: 20210514094222) en-US locale and US region and es-MX locale and MX region.

Comment 9

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc (PTO until Sept 2)]

(In reply to Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM] from comment #7)

Is this something we should nominate for Beta uplift?

Given that we shipped 2 releases with this bug, that there is no uplift request and that we build RC on Monday, this is wontfix for 89.