Online Shopping Feature Arrives in Ubuntu 12.10

Amazon shopping results have been integrated into the Unity Dash of Ubuntu 12.10.

The feature comes a day after news that Ubuntu were adding Amazon and Ubuntu One Music web-apps as default items on Unity launcher.

Canonical says that the feature ‘extends what was already introduced in the Music and Video Lenses’ by offering ’a “more suggestions” results category …to searches performed from the home dash.’

The boon for them is that they get a small % cut from every purchase made through the Dash (or the web-app mentioned yesterday), as Oliver Ries explained on the Ubuntu Development mailing list yesterday:

“…if a user clicks the item and purchases it, it will generate affiliate revenue that we can invest back into the project (in a similar way to how we generate revenue from the Firefox search
bar).

We have found affiliate revenue to be a good method of helping us to continue to invest in maturing and growing Ubuntu.”

Shopping Lens

Now, on the face of it, the idea of shopping results appearing in a pool of app launchers sounds scary, needless and tacked-on. But the implementation of it is, thankfully, graceful.

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