There was a connection between the search bar for awhile, if you typed in pants you'd get potential amazon links. It was easy to turn off and disappeared awhile later.
The Ubuntu Amazon fiasco is, if anything, evidence of extreme resistance to this kind of thing. The Linux community rejected Canonical's opt-out ad partnership with Amazon collectively and almost unanimously. The program was relatively benign, but it went against ideals of both users and developers, and there have been no repeats.
Did it happen? Yes. And that is enough information.
You have been called out for multiple falsehoods in your comments here and you've still failed to provide any evidence.
https://medium.com/sensorfu/how-my-application-ran-away-and-...
That said, "this has happened forever" is false too. These behaviors are relatively new and relatively under the radar. Many people don't know they exist to get upset about it.
Ubuntu uploads (at least it did couple years ago) your data to Amazon.