As @Kai pointed out, the online search results can be easily turned off with a click. I agree with @Tylnesh that the whole issue is being blown out of proportion. Mark Shuttleworth has also came out with a blog post stating that they will rectify privacy concerns with versions above 14.10. It's easy for everybody to jump on the hate bandwagon for Canonical simply because they decide to develop projects such as Upstart, Mir & Unity. Unity is a pretty competent DE and there are plenty of users that would disagree with your observation. Hell, there are users that'd say a DE is impractical and a WM is the only way to go.
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