For those out there that haven't bothered to do a quick search, one notable story about the issue can be found here [1]. Note that the date on that article is from 2014, and only refers to the Unity service for searching from Amazon. A later article [2] shows that Ubuntu has changed directions, but it certainly hasn't been 2-3 years. Needless to say, while it took Canonical some time, at least they dialed back what they were doing with online searches and made them opt-in. I've yet to see Microsoft, Google, or Apple dial back their telemetry services regardless of what criticism they may have faced (fair credit here, at least Apple is opt-in for the most part, though not entirely).

[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2840401/ubuntus-unity-8-deskt... [2] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/01/ubuntu-online-search-feat...