The Wall Street Journal has a tale detailing how Microsoft developers had worked outside a plot to add serious privacy capabilities to Internet Explorer 8, which would specifically be designed to try to block tracking efforts by advertisers. The default would recognize if a third-party supply/cookie/script appeared on more than 10 visited websites and would then assume that was a tracking device of sorts. The thought was to constitute this the default and constitute it simple for users to control their privacy settings. However, when term filtered over to the side of Microsoft’s business that sold advertising, folks there <a href=”http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383530439838568.html” target=”_blank”>went ballistic and forced the IE team to alter its plans</a>:
<blockquote><i>
Executives in Microsoft’s fresh ad business were upset when the designers of Internet Explorer hatched the plot to block tracking activity, affirm human beings involved in the debate. At a meeting in the spring of 2008, Brian McAndrews, a Microsoft senior vice president who had been chief executive of aQuantive before Microsoft bought it, complained to the browser planners. Their privacy plot, he argued, would disrupt the selling of Web ads by Microsoft and other companies, these human beings affirm.
</i></blockquote>
The folks on the other side realized that human beings were quickly moving away from IE, and thought (probably correctly) that the path to attract users was to really (what an thought!) fight for the users and what <i>they wanted</i>, such as by implementing strong privacy tools. After fighting it outside back and forth in a series of meetings, the advertising folks won… and Internet Explorer will continue to lose users. Admittedly, other browsers don’t offer such privacy features average either — and Google clearly has the same conflict of interest to deal with. However, these days, if you are concerned about privacy, using Firefox with NoScript, AdBlocker and various other privacy protection extensions can certainly aid.<br /><br /><a href=”http://techdirt.com/articles/20100802/13325810455.shtml”>Permalink</a> | <a href=”http://techdirt.com/articles/20100802/13325810455.shtml#comments”>Comments</a> | <a href=”http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20100802/13325810455&op=sharethis”>Email This Tale</a><br />
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