default search provider for ja locale

[Nobuto Murata]

Binary package hint: ubufox

We, Ubuntu Japanese LoCo team, propose to change default search provider for ja locale.

Expected result:
 1. search result page interface is localized and translated in Japanese.
 2. "pages in Japanese" narrow down works
 3. search page ranking is reasonable

Actual result with yahoo.com:
 1. search result page is displayed in English.
 2. "pages in Japanese" narrow down does not work. "pages in Japanese" hits pages written in English.
 3. search page ranking is unreasonable. because yahoo.com's search engine cannot recognize Japanese properly.

yahoo.com covers Germany, France, Spain, etc. like *.yahoo.com. So in these locales, search result pages are translated well.
Yahoo! Japan (yahoo.co.jp) covers Japan, but it is not a part of yahoo.com.
http://world.yahoo.com/

Back to Google will solve these 3 problems.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Mar 3 19:48:36 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha i386 (20100302)
Package: ubufox 0.9~b1-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=ja_JP.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-14.20-generic
SourcePackage: ubufox
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-14-generic i686

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

so if we used yahoo.co.jp it would be properly translated? what is used for you atm?

[Fumihito YOSHIDA (hito)]

Hi Alexander,

Yes. yahoo.co.jp is fully translated/localized. But, IMHO it unfits Ubuntu.
I think google.com is much better.
Because:
 - yahoo.co.jp 's engine provides by google.com. Its OEM.
 - yahoo.co.jp is not yahoo.com branch(only branding). And (may be) we have not any contract.
   If we provide yahoo.co.jp interface, but Ubuntu/Canonical does not gain any
   compensation(of course, yahoo.co.jp feel delight...).

But by the time, if Canonical has contract with yahoo.co.jp, yahoo.co.jp is coordinate google.com.

[Nobuto Murata (nobuto)]

> so if we used yahoo.co.jp it would be properly translated?
Yes.

> what is used for you atm?
I am using Google.

I heard that one of the reasons to switch to Yahoo.com from Google has a financial aspect.
If Canonical or Ubuntu community can sign a contract with Yahoo! Japan (yahoo.co.jp) not yahoo.com,
and if the revenue sharing with yahoo.co.jp is larger than Google,
it is nice to set yahoo.co.jp as default search provider.

But if we have no contract with yahoo.co.jp,
setting yahoo.co.jp as default would not do us much good.

Just a side note:
In Japan,
the popularity of Google and Yahoo! Japan is about 50:50.
The users who are familiar with computers likes Google.
But normal users use Yahoo! Japan as search provider because Yahoo! Japan is a large portal site.

Correction:
Fumihito wrote,
> - yahoo.co.jp 's engine provides by google.com. Its OEM.
it is not correct. The engine of yahoo.co.jp used to be google.com as OEM.
But now, google and yahoo.co.jp result is different.

[Nobuto Murata (nobuto)]

As another way of back to Google,
there is a way to change yahoo.com to yahoo.co.jp as Alexander said.

So, I have investigated and found that language-pack-ja can provide localized search engines.
As other locales like language-pack-de, if we could provide yahoo.co.jp as "Yahoo",
no default search engine change is needed.

I will post the fix for language-pack-ja later.

[Nobuto Murata (nobuto)]

Here is a easy fix for using yahoo.co.jp instead of yahoo.com.
We can add to mozilla.tar.gz to language-pack-ja as language-pack-ja-10.04+20100227/data/mozilla.tar.gz.
and if mozilla.tar.gz contains the attached yahoo.xml as usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/ja/yahoo.xml,
we can use yahoo.co.jp redirected from yahoo.com.

[Nobuto Murata (nobuto)]

This bug was fixed in lp:ubufox rev.204 and ubufox (0.9~rc2-0ubuntu1).
But there is no mention to this bug in changelog.
So I will close this bug as "Invalid", not "Fix released". Thank you.