731590 - Update search engine list for Thunderbird

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Search, defect)

Description

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

The product team have agreed a new search engine list as follows:

Bing (default)
Yahoo
Amazon
AOL
eBay
Twitter
Wikipedia

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Attachment: The fix

There's a couple of prefs etc being left in to support locales whilst we roll this out to them as well.

Comment 2

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Comment on attachment 601611 [details] [diff] [review]
The fix

Looks reasonable by inspection.  rs=me.

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Checked in: http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/3feeb4bdf852

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Comment on attachment 601611 [details] [diff] [review]
The fix

[Triage Comment]

Comment 5

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Checked into branches:

http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-aurora/rev/1c843848bd12
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-beta/rev/718999587ffa

Comment 6

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Verified fixed on Trunk.

Comment 7

[Alex Ihrig [:Thunderbird_Mail_DE]]

There was no comment to l10n teams. Wondering about the reasons and if we have to do this change, too?

Comment 8

[Marcel Berteler]

I read 'product team have agreed' but may I ask why Google was removed and how do I get it back as my preferred search engine?

Comment 9

[mitchell.perilstein]

Look, guys.  We all understand you have to strike business relationships to make money.  Default search engine settings to support those goals, okay, we get it.

But the reason we're using this product is choice and configurability. If you make it so hard to chose what we want, it will just confirm to users that you've jumped the shark and drive them away.

So okay, put bing as default if you must.  But leave a place to let me chose without a ton of hassle.

Comment 10

[abourcier]

Hello, I hope this will answer your request.
https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/add-search-engine-open-search

Comment 11

[mitchell.perilstein]

Hi Abourcier,

Yes I'm aware of the searchplugins xml hack, as well as the open_externally setting.  Sure, I can throw some xml around.

However, this is a "soft" customer interface issue, not a technical one.  It's about how marketing decisions can sometimes send a loud and clear messages to users. In this case, it's clear to us somebody struck some kind of exclusivity agreement to remove a popular, leading search engine and replace it with a distant, roundly disliked one, making no UX allowance to choose otherwise.  Not even DDG?

I've been a user of the Moz browsers--and the following various mail incarnations--since you guys were an alternative to Mosaic.  But now, for the first time in Moz, I've been made to feel like the product and not like the customer.  If I liked that feeling, I'd be using IE.

Thanks for reading.

Comment 12

[abourcier]

Hello,
The Thunderbird default list of search engines reflects the agreements and authorizations we have with their respective owners. We do not have such agreement or authorization from  Google.
This is a change that's primarily driven by business agreements and we generally do not publicly discuss these details. We realize it can influence the community, but as it is, we believe that the default list of search providers will give great search results.
I hope we will keep you amongst our Thunderbird users!

Comment 13

[Marcel Berteler]

@abourcier, so you are the 'Marketing' source that was quoted in getsatisfaction?

Well, as I said before, the statement is convenient for Business but not for the user. You know/knew it can influence the community and that is why you waited so long to make a statement, that is not even on the official blog? Seems to me the only reason why you made the statement is because people questioned the change after it was pushed through and not because you felt it was important to the end-user.

What worries me about these debate-less changes is that who knows what ever 'Marketing' is stopping / influencing in the development that is not in the best interest of the user but in the best interest of business agreements? Not a great feeling for an Open Source application.

If there is nothing to hide, why hide it? Play open card. If Google requested to be removed, than we can all ask Google why and stop bothering Mozilla. If Mozilla wanted money from Google for being listed and Google refused than we understand the search feature is just advertising space. We all understand Mozilla needs money, just be open about it. 

Continue hiding things and your support under contributors will reduce.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

please take this conversation to a newsgroup, or somewhere other than bugzilla

Comment 15

[abourcier]

You can now find an add-on at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/google-search-for-thunderbi/

Comment 16

[Mitra Ardron]

The page listed in Comment #10
https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/add-search-engine-open-search
needs editing - it seems to be both incomplete AND wrong. 

I'm not sure if that is you abourcier? It says to create a searchplugins directory but its not clear if this should be at the same level as the Profile directory, in the Profile directory or in the actual profile of the user. 

And ... it appears to be wrong - adding that google.xml file into all three places and restarting TB and it still doesn't work. 

Also - that list of search engines (Bing...Wikipedia) doesn't show up anywhere - is there a bug for that ?

Comment 17

[Mitra Ardron]

Sorry - slight correction - the instructions need to say that you should then perform a Bing search, you don't get the choice of engines until you've searched first on another one.