Chromium occasionally forgets default search engine

[Jacob]

Firstly, I believe this is not bug 631536 as, so far as I can tell, that one describes forgetting everything about search engines between sessions.

This is on Ubuntu 12.04, though I should imagine it is probably cross-version as Chromium versions are not (so far as I know) tied to Ubuntu versions. The Chromium version is "25.0.1364.172~svn20130323r187217-0ubuntu1~precise1" though I have had this problem across a few versions and just haven't had the time to figure out proper bug-reporting procedures.

Basically, I have Chromium set up to remember my one search engine, and I explicitly removed all the other options (so no Google, no Yahoo, no Bing, no whatever) so I would use a very specific search engine for right-clicking and for typing search terms into the URL bar. For a while, this worked just fine.

At some point a while ago, I do not believe it to have been around a given release but I also confess that my attention to such a detail was limited, occasionally Chromium would use Google in place of my search engine (as I describe which one is used, I refer both to the URL bar and the context menu) for a single instance, and then revert back to remembering its settings. This problem is tied to first instances of searching since opening the browser, but also does not happen every time I open it (almost averages out to more like one of three, but not specifically every third time)

My default search engine is not forgotten in the settings, and after the first instance of getting my settings wrong they will revert without me even going to check, but simply re-performing the search (opening a new tab, clicking away and right-clicking again) so the setting isn't lost, it is more like the setting fails to initially be applied sometimes.

While I have learned to be more careful with double-checking the text for searching in Chromium when I use it, it does seem wrong that a browser would opt back to a default setting for search engines without prompt. Users may opt to change search engines out of a specific desire to not feed information into a given search engine and it seems like this forgetfulness is something of a privacy problem.

(Additionally, I am aware that Google has a fair involvement in Chromium as they base Chrome off of it. My understanding though is that Chromium is meant to be an open browser which does not explicitly tie itself to Google, as the bound-to-Google components would only be distributed as part of the Chrome build, allowing the features of the browser itself to be had with Chromium for someone seeking to not have the features of the Google integration that are inherent in Chrome)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: chromium-browser 25.0.1364.172~svn20130323r187217-0ubuntu1~precise1 [origin: LP-PPA-a-v-shkop-chromium]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-40.64-generic 3.2.40
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-40-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.1
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: ubuntu
Date: Sun Apr 21 11:39:47 2013
Desktop-Session:
 DESKTOP_SESSION = ubuntu
 XDG_CONFIG_DIRS = /etc/xdg/xdg-ubuntu:/etc/xdg
 XDG_DATA_DIRS = /usr/share/ubuntu:/usr/share/gnome:/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/
Env:
 MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH = None
 LD_LIBRARY_PATH = None
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120823.1)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: chromium-browser
ThirdParty: True
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
chromium-default: CHROMIUM_FLAGS=""

[Saikrishna Arcot (saiarcot895)]

Is this still happening on Chromium 28? I switched to DuckDuckGo and haven't had this issue happen except when I previously searched for something using Google; in that case, it will probably use Google instead of DuckDuckGo.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. You reported this bug some time ago and there have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time. Your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates.

It would help us a lot if you could test on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running only once in a terminal:

apport-collect 1171219

and add any additional information that you think relevant. Alternatively, please confirm that this is no longer a problem and that we can close the report. If we do not hear from you the bug report will close itself in approximately two months time.

Thank you again for helping make Ubuntu better.

Paul White
[Ubuntu Bug Squad]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for chromium-browser (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]