575960 - Why send google the rls parameter?

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[gionnico]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; it; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100628 Firefox/3.6.6
Build Identifier: 

The following parameter is set by default in google.xml :
<Param name="rls" value="{moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}:{moz:[un-]official}"/>

If one didn't compile with --with-distribution-id= then there's no distributionID.
But if one did, this will send google the &rls parameter that isn't required!

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

--with-distribution-id allows you to override the default ("org.mozilla").

We send the parameter because it allows Google to roughly measure the number of Firefox users (using either official or unofficial builds).

Comment 2

[Dan Jacobson]

Note Bug 869398.