I always wondered if Canonical would run into issues around Firefox trademarks. I know that Mozilla policy is sensitive with regards to what things downstream can change and still use the Firefox trademark. In particular they want to make sure that downstream vendors are not shipping buggy features and tarnishing the Firefox brand. I would expect that shipping a Firefox derivative that did not default to the Google search engine would not make Mozilla (or Google) happy. This is why I was so surprised when Canonical first announced the change to Yahoo.

You know, some times is can pay off to have principles and to stand for them. Who says that DK's company can't make any money while avoiding Microsoft's internet platform? Maybe his company isn't interested is writing enterprisey code for large corporations that are stuck in their old way. Maybe he isn't interested in working with customers that are going to force him to work in a closed platform.

Sometimes it makes sense to drive customers places they don't yet realize they need to be. I think DK's customers will thank him in a few years when their entire infrastructure isn't based on a proprietary system, just because the customer thought Silverlight looked cool.