Directly quoted from wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware )

"Spyware is a type of malware (malicious software) installed on computers that collects information about users without their knowledge"

"Sometimes, spyware is included along with genuine software, and may come from an official software vendor"

Ubuntu community folks are very good at public relations. However, if you look past their lovely sales speech, it is spyware. I would be more tolerant if the feature would be opt-in rather than opt-out. Making it opt-out defines it as spyware as un-informed users don't know their data is being collected and published on the internet.

I always loved Ubuntu and have sold it to many of my friends. I am sad to see this great product go down the road it is going now. I am running 12.04 LTS right now and monitoring the outcome of this issue. I really hope Canonical can come to their senses and listen to their community. No-one wants this! Read the forums and blog posts! I am seriously considering moving to Mint if they continue down that path.

I do think RMS has a very good point here. But regardless of what he says, Canonical is clearly not introducing online Amazon searches for the pure benefit of their user base. Their intentions are pretty clear: they want to make commissions by taking advantage of their dominant position in the GNU/Linux market. They would never have introduced this feature when Ubuntu was a new, small distribution. As the saying goes: power corrupts.

At the end of the day, we're in a free market and Canonical might as well do as they please and if they want to milk their user base, it's their right to do so. However, considering that most of Canonicals user base are technologically savvy individuals that value their privacy, that's probably a bad move from them. I believe that it's only a matter of time before Canonical realizes that, publicly apologizes and removes the feature from their operating system. Either that or Ubuntu will be forked and maintained by a more ethical organization.

That's ultimately the power of free software. In the long run, bad players will get weeded out.