Microsoft Quashed Effort to Boost Online Privacy
The online habits of most people who use the world's dominant Web browser are an open book to advertisers. That wasn't the plan at first. — In early 2008, Microsoft Corp.'s product planners for the Internet Explorer 8. browser intended …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft had previously positioned itself as privacy-conscious, and Internet Explorer 8 was slated to add a browser privacy mode in 2008. The Wall Street Journal report indicates that a stronger privacy effort considered by IE8 planners did not survive the product process.
That reversal matters because Internet Explorer’s scale makes its default treatment of tracking consequential for both web users and the advertisers that observe their browsing behavior. It also sits uneasily beside Microsoft’s earlier privacy push.
First-order effects
- Internet Explorer 8 users receive less protection from advertiser tracking than the abandoned proposal would have provided, leaving browsing behavior more visible to ad networks.
- Advertisers and tracking intermediaries retain access to the browser audience without having to adapt to the stronger IE8 privacy measure under consideration.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft’s browser product team must balance privacy differentiation against the commercial disruption that stricter tracking controls impose on the advertising ecosystem.
- Competing browsers can use privacy features as a point of differentiation, while advertisers have an incentive to favor environments that preserve existing tracking practices.
Third-order effects
- Browser privacy settings are becoming a strategic control point between dominant software platforms and the advertising systems built on behavioral data.
- If large browser vendors treat privacy protections as optional product choices rather than defaults, users’ practical privacy will depend heavily on vendor incentives and configuration decisions.
The trend: Web browsers are emerging as the key gatekeepers in the conflict between user privacy controls and advertising’s dependence on observable browsing behavior.