What about Firefox which has shipped with Google search default since forever, which Google pays Mozilla for, which Google makes money on? Will you never use Firefox again?
Hmm, that's a valid point. I just have the idea of Linux distributions as being completely free and non-profit oriented. Also I'm used to the OS having no ads by itself, only on webpages. Guess I overreacted.
You may wanna read up on what free software actually is. The free used by the FSF generally denotes that you have access to the source code and are free to modify and redistribute it.
How do pre-installed ads violate any free-software doctrine? One can still access/modify the source code of any part of the operating system (except proprietary drivers). It does not attempt to hinder a users ability to do anything with the computer.
An example of a free-software violation would be the bittorent clients, which have to way to disable obeying the private bit. While one does have access to the source code, and can therefore modify this themselves, the software is designed with the explicit intention to remove the users freedom to dis-obey the private bit.
Adds are annoying, but do not affect any user freedoms.
Here is a quote of a quote of the technology director of Canocial:
"Another addition is that we will be including Launcher web apps icons to
Amazon and the Ubuntu One Music Store by default. We feel that these
icons will provide convenient access to these resources for our users
and also benefit the project with the generation of affiliate revenue in
those cases that these resources are used. If our users choose to not
use these Launcher icons, they can be easily removed by the user by
dragging the icon to the trash."
I got that from the linked forum, but haven't searched the mailing lists to validate it.
