What a horrible article. In reality you just need to uninstall 2 packages if you're worried about tracking. And the search works in the Unity - doesn't apply to Xubuntu I recommended.
Even with Unity it can be disabled from settings:
(Image removed from quote.)
So you disapprove of GNU founder and approve of Canonical default 'adware' installs on GNU GPL licensed software? It's not that Canonical didn't sin before and as it looks like, it is not the last time either.
Remember Canonical's tracking of Ubuntu installs?
What do you get when you ignore little things like that? You get Open Office (before handed over to Apache F.), MySQL, RHE, etc. But no worries, you can always uninstall those and switch to Libre, MariaDB and CentOS, right? Well, that shouldn't be an argument at all, otherwise you could just stick with Microsoft and Apple.