This isn't all that bad. MS tracking the use of these default bookmarks in part means that they are attempting to better accomodate the user. One of Microsoft's most underhanded and dirty tricks for selling tons of software has been making software that is relatively easy to use (oh wait, that's good). So in this effort to be kniving and deceitful they are trying to determine if people actually use these links, and hence whether they should be featured more or less prominantly in the browser. If no one uses them they will go away, which would not be a bad result. Does it matter that a side objective is seeing who visits CNN? No. This isn't a difficult conclusion to come by, given that user tracking is one of the best tools of usability experts to improve products. and MS does have an active usability group. That's it.
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This isn't all that bad. MS tracking the use of these default bookmarks in part means that they are attempting to better accomodate the user. One of Microsoft's most underhanded and dirty tricks for selling tons of software has been making software that is relatively easy to use (oh wait, that's good). So in this effort to be kniving and deceitful they are trying to determine if people actually use these links, and hence whether they should be featured more or less prominantly in the browser. If no one uses them they will go away, which would not be a bad result. Does it matter that a side objective is seeing who visits CNN? No. This isn't a difficult conclusion to come by, given that user tracking is one of the best tools of usability experts to improve products. and MS does have an active usability group. That's it.