mozilla.org doesn't need to be pimping particular commercial search services--I imagine commercial vendors are compensated to do exactly that. See bug 20862 for precedent.

moving to search

So what are we doing about this search stuff defaulting to netscape? People don't like it so much

One suggestion has been to default mozilla to dmoz. A point to make clear: the URLs defined inside of the included Sherlock files are used to determine when a HTML page is actually a "search result" to be used for the quick list in the search sidebar panel. No Sherlock file for a search engine, no search sidebar results. So, while the "mozilla.org doesn't need to be pimping search engines" is perhaps correct, its also worth while to note that by not having Sherlock files for as many search engines as possible, Mozilla users lose functionality.

Braden, please make a list of search services that you would be happy with, so we can talk about some concrete suggestions.

The problem, as I see it, is the precedent being set by including commercial services here. These are advertisements. Yes, they offer useful value. And from the Idealistic Optimistic Capitalist point-of-view, *all* advertisements offer useful value. Consumers, of course, would take issue with such a contention if it were applied to real-world advertisements. But the bottom line is that the utility of a particular advertisement is *always* a subjective call. So where should the line be drawn? Whose advertisement gets to go into Mozilla, whose is turned down, and on what grounds? The subjectivity involved makes this is a slippery slope. Too slippery, IMO. For this reason, I think it is a Bad Idea for Mozilla to include advertisements for commercial services. And to that end, I think only other open source products should get placement in the Mozilla UI. To answer your question, Mike, the only service I know of that fits this criterion is dmoz. I wish I could list some more, but I don't know of any. Certainly having just one search service in Mozilla is an undesirable limitation. Nonetheless, I'm of the opinion that the presently-employed alternative sets too dangerous a precedent. The limitation to one default search service could be substantially alleviated by allowing the user to add search services. I'm not sure how practical that is, though.

Personally, I don't know that I agree with the "search engine as advertisement" trivialization. Its a disservice to Mozilla users to place such a harse limitation on the number of search services. I believe a much more preferrable solution would be to encourage search services to play a part. Otherwise, the search feature is irrelevant. As another example, Alis has its language translation feature in Mozilla. They show branding when you try and translate a page from one language to another. Would you prefer to remove that useful feature as well? I'd prefer for us all to "keep our eyes on the prize", which in this case I believe is enabling Mozilla to be as robust as possible in regards to internet search functionality. (Naturally, along with keep legal issues in mind.)

"Trivialization"? If that remark is accurate, then it seems like it should be "trivial" to produce a set of guidelines by which product placements could be deemed appropriate or inappropriate for Mozilla. Such guidelines would most likely put this issue to rest. But please, don't ask me for help coming up with them. *I* don't think this distinction is trivial. And, yes, the Alis stuff is no less inappropriate. Can *anyone* submit a patch to Mozilla inserting a link to their site in the browser's menus? If not, would mozilla.org be able to objectively defend a decision to decline such a patch?

> Can *anyone* submit a patch to Mozilla inserting a link to their site in the browser's menus? Anyone can *submit* a patch for anything. Would the patch be accepted? Its up to the module owner to decide the value of the submission. Would I personally commit a patch which adds Joe-User's web page as a link into Mozilla? Most likely not, assuming that it has little value to the average web user. Would I commit a patch which adds a feature such as language translation or enhanced search support which thousands if not millions of people would use daily and find value in? Quite possibly, yes. You are entitled to your opinion. As the module owner of search functionality in Mozilla, I have mine.

Indeed. And as an employee of AOL, you also have a conflict of interest. These links represent the interests of your employer and those of entities with whom your employer presumably has business relationships. It is certain that having these links distributed in the Mozilla source as well as the Netscape client presents additional benefit for AOL and additional value for these business partners. Whether or not this situation impacts your decision on this matter is irrelevant: a conflict of interest exists; there is the appearance of impropriety. If eliminating product placement in Mozilla is out of the question, the conflict of interest could probably be mitigated with a mozilla.org policy outlining when and where product placements are appropriate. I would suspect that this (barely) subtle branding might make potential competitors to AOL (or its affiliates) think twice before leveraging the Mozilla code. That situation might be good for AOL. I can't imagine that it would be good for mozilla.org. <sigh> Well, if product placement is indeed the direction Mozilla is going, I guess this bug can be closed.

Its true that I am an AOL employee. While you might see a "conflict of interest", you are missing the simple point that if you remove all the references to third-party search engines, then Mozilla's search sidebar panel becomes basically useless (unless users create/find search datasets and add them in by hand.) I personally don't want to see that. Why? It means the feature is used less by developers, receives less quality, and the Mozilla browser is less usable. I don't care if ANY AOL-sanctioned search engines are in Mozilla or not. I do care that as many popular third party engines are made available (within the limits of the law) as possible. Mozilla.org staff are working on this issue from a legal standpoint.

I am not missing that point. I just think it is decidedly secondary to avoiding the potential for Mozilla to be reduced to a delivery mechanism for its contributors' ads. But perhaps my views are alarmist. But let me try to discuss a potential solution... I am curious about the potential to enable users to add search engines themselves, *almost* as arbitrarily as bookmarks can be added. Looking at the Sherlock files, they seem pretty simple. I am inclined to suspect we could come up with a pretty simple spec (relying on META tags and HTML comments) by which search providers could create pages which a generated Sherlock file could make sense of. IMO, this opens up the process to the advantage of both users and search providers. Users nolonger would need to be burdened with search services they don't use, and search providers could make the change to enable this Mozilla feature *entirely* on their end, so they wouldn't have to wait for Mozilla source changes to trickle into the user base. Does this sound like something that might be workable? If it does, I'll delve further into this and work on such a spec.

See "http://www.mozilla.org/projects/search/technical.html" for an example of using JavaScript to add a search engine.

Note: "javascript:" URLs currently are broken (see bug # 34217). If you want to work around it, you can use "onclick" handlers instead.

Unless I'm waay off base, isn't that *exactly* how it works now? The only question or discussion is which search engines would ship with the browser. Keeping in mind having one or none makes the feature less discoverable and providing the sherlock file w/o permission from the site is illegal.

Ah, cool! I didn't realize this much had been implemented. But no, what I described is not "exactly" as it appears to work now, though there is obviously substantial similarity. Functionally, the thing that seems to be missing from the current implementation is discoverability. I'm drifting beyond the scope of this bug here, but by "discoverable" I mean that the browser could "look" at the page and see that it would be a candidate for adding as a search engine. This might be useful to do things like enable an "add" button in the search sidebar. Consider a combination of META and LINK elements: <meta name="mozilla-search-name" content="Foo"> <meta name="mozilla-search-category" content="Web"> <link rel="sherlock" href="http://www.foosearch.com/foo.src"> <link rel="sherlock-icon" href="http://www.foosearch.com/foo.png"> Perhaps something like that would make a good enhancement; but as has been said, that's not the point of this bug. IMO, the ability to add (and presumably delete) search services means it makes less sense for Mozilla to proceed down what I perceive to be a slippery slope. But I've already belabored that point and I won't do it further. Since this bug hasn't been closed yet, I'm guessing that's because folks think there's something amidst all this that ought to be addressed. Let's figure out what needs to be done to move this bug toward closure. Removing non-open search services appears to be out of the question. Matt wrote (about a month ago): "So what are we doing about this search stuff defaulting to netscape? People don't like it so much." The suggestion to default to dmoz sounds nice and uncontroversial. Since mozilla.org apparently deems more drastic recourse unnecessary, I'm of the opinion that that ought to close this bug.

I've considered META tags; however, JavaScript is the path that I've chosen to support due to various constraints.

I thought that I would insert some of my own opinion into this conversation. I also think that mozilla should not contain links to netscape services. Example: Clicking on the Search the Web on the Search menu goes to the netscape site. It should probably goto dmoz.org at the present time since that is the only non-commercial search that I know of. As far as the sidebar search panel goes, we should have links to most of the major search engines. They should not go through netscape in any way. They should be direct links. The problem is determining the major search engines. For now we should just pick some. This maybe a good poll for mozillazine: What are your favorite search engines, and then we use the top 10 or something. Here are the ones on the bottom of search pages at dmoz.org. All the Web - AltaVista - Deja - Google - HotBot - Infoseek - Netscape - Northern Light - Yahoo

*** Bug 37843 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Copying the dup bug 37843: -------------------------- Reporter sford3@swbell.net ------------------------ It seems as if netscape shop has been added to mozilla, shouldn't this be in the commercial tree? ------- Additional Comments From leaf@mozilla.org 2000-05-01 18:46 ------- rjc, this stuff belongs in the ns tree somewhere. ------- Additional Comments From rjc@netscape.com 2000-05-01 19:12 ------- For everyone who DOESN'T want some search engines in Mozilla, there is someone else who does. For example, see bug # 32586 for requests to add more engines. I personally believe that Mozilla should accept search files from any official contributor (whether Netscape or anyone else) barring legal issues. So, if JoeUser submitted a search file for "Google" we should not accept it. However, if someone directly from Google submitted a search file for their web site, Mozilla should accept it. Basically, the more search engines that are there, the more valuable the search sidebar panel is for the user. If Mozilla basically has no search engines in it, then the search functionality in Mozilla won't function and will receive little testing. Reassigning this bug to marketing, and cc'ing mitchell@mozilla.org ------- Additional Comments From mozilla@bucksch.org 2000-05-02 00:16 ------- Mozilla should propbaly include the top <= 10 search engines or so. (We propably wouldn't want to have a Microsoft search engine (or something similar) in there, even if it were part of the top 10 :) .) Shop@Netscape certainly is not part of them. If you include Shop@Netscape, why not ebay? Its competitors? Maybe amazon? egghead? Please remove Shop@Netscape. > [...] legal issues. So, if JoeUser submitted a search file for "Google" we > should not accept it. However, if someone directly from Google submitted a > search file for their web site, Mozilla should accept it. What legal issues? It is OK to include a search engine in the bookmarks by default. HTML clients have the freedom of presentation. => JoeContributor should should be able to submit new search files. If they are accepted depends on the Mozilla community. -- Additional Comments From amitp@google.com 2000-04-27 12:59 in bug 32586 -- > One problem seems to be that the search engine companies aren't going to > guarantee that their HTML is formatted in any particular way. If Netscape > distributes Sherlock plug-ins for search engine XYZ, and XYZ changes its > HTML, then users will complain to Netscape. > That's no reason not to put them in Mozilla, though. :-) ------- Additional Comments From rjc@netscape.com 2000-05-02 01:33 ------- > What legal issues? One example: Many major search engines strictly prohibit redisplaying of their copyrighted content in any form other than what they present it as. ------- Additional Comments From mozilla@bucksch.org 2000-05-02 01:59 ------- > One example: Many major search engines strictly prohibit redisplaying of their > copyrighted content in any form other than what they present it as. How do "they present it as"? There's no "correct" way to display HTML. It is by definition completely up to the client, what to do with it. ------- Additional Comments From rjc@netscape.com 2000-05-02 02:37 ------- I'm not going to argue this point. Its merely a fact. We do re-display search results in an altered form. ------- Additional Comments From braden@endoframe.com 2000-05-02 10:57 ------- Folks, most of this discussion has already taken place in bug 30653. (Is this a dup?) BenB: Top ten? That's a totally arbitrary distinction. On what logical, defensible basis would you rationalize not including a particular search service? And why *wouldn't* we want a Microsoft search engine??? It appears to be okay with you for mozilla.org to have overt prejudice about who will and won't go into the Search feature. While I'm not happy with the situation as it is now, we *definitely* don't want to go in that direction! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My new comments: braden, yes, it is arbitarily, but (nearly) the same as David suggested. Dunno, if it's worth a poll. Maybe. Please note, that dmoz' search engines at the bottom are propably also influended by Netscape: it included many more 2 month or so ago, including my favorite one: MetaCrawler. rfc wrote at 2000-04-09 04:19: > Would the patch be accepted? Its up > to the module owner to decide the value of the submission. Please keep in mind, that the Mozilla community has the final call.

Jeremy, this would be bug 37873.

Jeremy, it looks to me, as if it were not a patch, but a full source file. Please attach a diff (|cvs diff -u <sourcefile> > <difffile>|) to bug 37873. Tnx.

Don Melton says, "What should we do with this one/who should own it?"

.

I don't think, this should be resolved later. The thread in .seamonkey shows, that this needs to be resolved, and I am not the only one thinking this. REOPENing. We need a strategy, how to decide, which ones are to be included and what we will do, if a search engine provider complains. This should be decided by mozilla.org/the mozilla community.

REASSIN to shaver@mozilla.org

There are two basic opinions: - It's only there for raw testing, so any will do.(practically: AOL's services) - For Mozilla dogfood, we need to have a reasonable default set, where reasonable means acceptable for the Mozilla community - No commercial engines at all - A limited set of popular ones - All My opinion: I think, the last one is impossible. 1. ignores dogfood and also looks bad for an open source project.

> the last one the very last one, i.e. "All"

La la la, pass the buck.

For the sake of testing ( and because we have permission ) I've checked in a google search source.

marking VERIFIED

*** Bug 37315 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***