[Pkg-chromium-maint] Bug#781591: does not allow to disable omnibox automatic search in URL input field

[Martin Steigerwald]

Package: chromium
Version: 41.0.2272.76-2
Severity: normal

Dear maintainer,

after I had it again that Chromium tried to search a local hostname
with the default search machine as I entered into the URL input field
I wanted to disable this feature completely once and for all.

It seems to be called omnibox. Yet, none of the descriptions I found
on how to disable this feature worked. I tried the following:

- Disable all options under Settings/Privacy including the one to
  correct nagivation errors with a web service and the one to autocomplete
  search queries
- I tried disabling instant search, but Chromium as packaged in Debian
  does not have this options in the Search area of settings. Its just
  missing there.
- Disable chrome://flags/#search-button-in-omnibox


The only thing that worked is setting a search engine with "%s" as URL
and set this one as a default, which took me quite some time to find out:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/gX-XROa4f6c
http://superuser.com/questions/355805/how-to-disable-search-in-the-google-chrome-address-bar


So by default Chromium dials back into Google search, and even when you
switch it to Startpage or something like this, it may ask search engines
in case you want to access a local server without prepending "http://"
or "https://" to the search and there is no easy way to disable this.

Please consider making Chromium in Debian more privacy aware or to add
at least a hint in README.Debian on how to disable automatic search. In
Iceweasel this behavior can be easily disabled.

I did not report this with crbug.com for two reasons:
- I do not have a Google account anymore and don´t want one.
- I don´t expect upstream to implement something like this as I bet it
  is against Google´s advertising and data collection interests.


I offer to write up some text for README.Debian.

Thanks,
Martin


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (200, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.0.0-rc6-tp520-btrfs-trim+ (SMP w/4 CPU cores; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

Versions of packages chromium depends on:
ii  libasound2           1.0.28-1
ii  libc6                2.19-17
ii  libcairo2            1.14.0-2.1
ii  libcups2             1.7.5-11
ii  libdbus-1-3          1.8.16-1
ii  libexpat1            2.1.0-6+b3
ii  libfontconfig1       2.11.0-6.3
ii  libfreetype6         2.5.2-4
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0   2.31.1-2+b1
ii  libglib2.0-0         2.42.1-1
ii  libgnome-keyring0    3.12.0-1+b1
ii  libgtk2.0-0          2.24.25-3
ii  libharfbuzz0b        0.9.35-2
ii  libjpeg62-turbo      1:1.3.1-12
ii  libnspr4             2:4.10.7-1
ii  libnspr4-0d          2:4.10.7-1
ii  libnss3              2:3.17.2-1.1
ii  libpango-1.0-0       1.36.8-3
ii  libpangocairo-1.0-0  1.36.8-3
ii  libpci3              1:3.2.1-3
ii  libspeechd2          0.8-7
ii  libspeex1            1.2~rc1.2-1
ii  libsrtp0             1.4.5~20130609~dfsg-1.1
ii  libstdc++6           4.9.2-10
ii  libx11-6             2:1.6.2-3
ii  libxcomposite1       1:0.4.4-1
ii  libxcursor1          1:1.1.14-1+b1
ii  libxdamage1          1:1.1.4-2+b1
ii  libxext6             2:1.3.3-1
ii  libxfixes3           1:5.0.1-2+b2
ii  libxi6               2:1.7.4-1+b2
ii  libxml2              2.9.2+dfsg1-3
ii  libxrandr2           2:1.4.2-1+b1
ii  libxrender1          1:0.9.8-1+b1
ii  libxslt1.1           1.1.28-2+b2
ii  libxss1              1:1.2.2-1
ii  libxtst6             2:1.2.2-1+b1
ii  x11-utils            7.7+2
ii  xdg-utils            1.1.0~rc1+git20111210-7.4

chromium recommends no packages.

Versions of packages chromium suggests:
ii  chromium-inspector  41.0.2272.76-2
ii  chromium-l10n       41.0.2272.76-2

-- no debconf information