Your Complete Infosource…

Ubuntu’s corporate backer, Canonical, is looking to raise a little scratch in a deal with Yahoo! It’s inked a deal that will make Yahoo! the default search engine on the version of Firefox shipped with Ubuntu, supplanting Google. In return, Canonical will get a piece of the ad revenue Yahoo! generates from Ubuntu users.

It’s a nifty deal that doesn’t impose any real strains on the Ubuntu user community. Firefox will act as normal, so users wanting to switch back to Google won’t have any problem doing so. The only possible loser will be Mozilla, which gets a goodly chunk of its revenue from a similar deal with Google.

The odd thing about it all, Stephen Shankland of Cnet.com says, are the relationships that may emerge from this. Yahoo! has negotiated the sale of its search business with Microsoft, a deal that’s awaiting regulatory approval. That means one of Canonical’s financial lifelines will be with Microsoft, which doesn’t hold Linux, in any of its many manifestations, in high regard.

Canonical’s deal with Yahoo! will start this April, with the release of version 10.04, or “Lucid Lynx.”