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Microsoft's Ad Team Trumps IE Developers' Privacy Aims

Posted by timothy on from the sounds-like-a-movie-script dept.

phantomfive writes "The company everyone loves to hate is after your private information, as the Wall Street Journal reports. The IE8 design team had planned on adding the best privacy features available, but the advertising executives wanted to track users. From the story: 'In the end, the product planners lost a key part of the debate. The winners: executives who argued that giving automatic privacy to consumers would make it tougher for Microsoft to profit from selling online ads. Microsoft built its browser so that users must deliberately turn on privacy settings every time they start up the software.'"

3 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. What do they need tracking in IE8 for by Netshroud · · Score: -1, Troll

    when they have WGA/WPA?

  2. huh? by bsDaemon · · Score: 1, Troll

    When was Microsoft profiting from selling online ads? Maybe I just missed it, but I thought that they actually had real products and weren't just some spooty ad company trying to ingratiate themselves on the world with free swag? Actually, they hardly seem to have ingratiated themselves with anyone for any reason.

    I wouldn't be surprised if the real reason is they're afraid that it would be seen as an anti-competitive move against Google, which is basically just a spooty ad company trying to ingratiate itself on the world with free swag. Otherwise, I see no reason for them not to make delivering ads 10x harder, thus sticking it to the GOOG.

  3. Re:Like any of us were going to use IE anyway by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Seriously, is anyone on /. using IE anyway? Firefox with adblock and noscript is all you need.

    Sure, if you want a piece of shit slow browser that can't view any websites because of some half-assed, "secure" extension that fucking sucks. Dick out of your ass please. I'll stick with Chrome.