Canonical has landed the second beta preview of Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal, which has, in the days preceding its release, already become most notable for, of all things, integrating search results from Amazon.com. Yes, there is a new Lens in the Unity Dash that will poll Amazon to find results relevant to your search terms. And yes, if you click the link and buy the item Canonical gets a small percentage of the income, much like Mozilla makes a bit of money when you search Google from Firefox. Naturally a certain percent of Ubuntu users took to the web to voice their outrage at not being consulted when the Amazon Unity Lens was added. The complaints were picked up by enough of the tech press that no less than Shuttleworth himself stepped into the fray to assure users that their privacy was not being violated, no one is running advertisements in Ubuntu and really, really Canonical just wants to help. And make some money as well. As Shuttleworth was at pains to point out, the Amazon results shown in the Dash are not advertisements. They're simply things that match your search terms. Search for "iPod" and Unity will find any iPod manager apps you might have installed and it may also return some results to buy an iPod from Amazon. If you click through and end up buying a new iPod case or something of the like, Canonical gets a small kickback. It seems pretty harmless, but it is very different. I'm not aware of another operating system that integrates shopping results at such a low level. Apps yes, OSes no. As with all things radically new, it rubs some people the wrong way (see this hilarious bug report). Combine that with the fact that Amazon isn't a terribly useful first choice for web-based results and you have a perfect little storm for your Ubuntu teacup. The new Amazon Lens in the Unity Dash is supplemented by an Amazon "app", which marks the first of many webapps that Canonical plans to turn into relatively first-class citizens on the desktop. Search for "Amazon" in the Applications Lens and then click the Amazon app. That will open up Firefox with a new tab on the Amazon homepage -- provided of course you have an internet connection. And that's where putting web apps next to native apps may be a little confusing. Putting webapps alongside native apps works quite well on mobile devices because, with nearly ubiquitous network connections, the difference between the two isn't all that noticeable. True, you might not be able to use your webapps every now and then when you stray outside cell coverage, but most people are not only okay with that, they've come to expect it. However, once webapps move to the laptop and try to become first class citizens, the similarities fade and differences come to the forefront, namely that without wifi your webapp will be a blank, useless page in Firefox. You can almost hear the support calls now -- how come I can't access this app? A few webapps, notably Google's popular offerings, do have offline components, but most, like Amazon, don't. As HTML5 and its related APIs get more powerful and are more widely adopted webapps will likely become indistinguishable from their desktop cousins. And that's where Quantal Quetzal seems to be aiming with webapps -- the future. Right now the webapps -- such as they are, limited as they are in this beta -- are a half-baked idea that has a lot of kinks to work out. But that's exactly what Ubuntu One was when it launched. Ditto the music store and the software center, both of which started out as fumbling attempts that were later polished into useful tools. Whether or not Ubuntu's take on webapps will end up working out these initial kinks remains to be seen. While Ubuntu's Amazon integration has been in the spotlight, there are other new features in the second beta of Quantal Quetzal, including several improvements to the Dash previews that premiered in the first beta. Dash previews now have nice transition animations -- it looks a bit like your Dash folds open to reveal the preview -- and some new action buttons. For example, it's now possible to search for an app, discover it exists but isn't installed, click install and open the new app all without ever leaving the Dash. The refinements also extend to the rest of the Unity Dash, which has received some visual polish and a few other nice, small touches, like the ability to reposition or even remove the Unity launcher button. The latest beta also sees the usual minor updates to the full compliment of GNOME apps that ship with Ubuntu. Like any beta release Quantal Quetzal beta 2 has its rough edges, but it's a step up from the previous beta and, as Shuttleworth said in response to the Amazon naysayers, "I'm pretty sure by 14.04 LTS we'll have the kinks unkinked. Till then, come along for the ride, or stick with 12.04 LTS... we can't wait till it's perfect before landing everything, because the only way to learn what's not perfect is to have other people -- real people -- use it."