

Microsoft web browser that covers its tracks could hit Google’s advertising - hhm
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article4623178.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1063742

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KirinDave
People have had access to this feature for years now from Safari and Firefox,
and things haven't exploded. Why is it suddenly a concern with a beta of IE8?

People are _really_ eager to find MS conspiracies to write about. I guess if
you're a tech journalist, it's kind of like the white whale of your industry.

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greyman
How it can be done it Firefox, is there some plugin to do it? I am just
curious...I am aware that I can switch on erasing my private data when I close
Firefox, but that isn't the same thing.

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ojbyrne
"Although casual users cannot see the previous user’s search history,
authorities such as the police will be able to access it if necessary."

So everything is actually still there, just not present in the UI? Seems
pretty silly if so.

~~~
breck
I think the article is simplified a bit for the masses who don't understand
how the internet operates.

Cookies and browser history aren't saved locally(is my guess of IE8, I haven't
used it), but the ISP and/or Website could still have a record of your visit
which could be obtained by the police.

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shadytrees
> Microsoft and Google failed to return calls last night.

They're just, you know, shy and unsure of what to say. Should they commit to
this relationship? They've been burned before.

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greyman
>> "In allowing surfers to access websites but conceal their browsing
behaviour, Microsoft prevents internet sites from collecting information about
their users" <<

How exactly? I don't get it. I supposed they just turn off local cache and
local browsing history...

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ii
InPrivate Blocking feature won't allow the site you're visiting to send
information to third-party sites, various ad sites, google-analitics.com and
friends included.

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axod
This is so wrong it belongs on theonion. This will have absolutely no impact
on google, or any other advertising.

Contextual advertising just does not work the way the article supposes it
does.

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mattmaroon
I think you missed the point. Google (like most large ad networks) does a lot
more than just contextual advertising, especially now that they own
DoubleClick. There are a lot of sites like MySpace with little or no context
that make up a huge % of Google's non-search page views.

Google serves ads there largely based on context from previous pages you
visited. For instance, if you searched on Google for "digital camera" and then
later went to YouTube, they might show you ads for digital cameras.

Many big ad networks do this. Browsers blocking that would greatly lower CPMs.

~~~
axod
So the browser stops supporting cookies does it? Even if the browser does stop
sending cookies to google, they could do pretty good tracking based on
useragent/ip.

However, a browser that doesn't support cookies correctly, isn't very useful.

The browsers history is completely irrelevant.

From the article: "others using the same computer will not be able to see
which sites have been accessed."

That is not the same as "Cookies sent from google will no longer work"

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mattmaroon
It supports cookies just fine. It just doesn't send your info to every third
party site that has a pixel on the page.

Now for Google to track you as you move around the web, they'll have to do a
lot more than simply give people a JS snippet to slap in their pages. That's
the point. It won't make it impossible for them, but it could make it
impractical.

The article probably didn't explain it so well because it was aimed at a non-
technical audience.

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axod
"It supports cookies just fine. It just doesn't send your info to every third
party site that has a pixel on the page."

Look. Either it does, or it doesn't. Either the cookie that google told the
browser about is sent back to google as defined in the RFC, or it is not.

"It just doesn't send your info to every third party site that has a pixel on
the page."

What info?? The cookie that was previously set by the 3rd party site?

You seem to be muddily suggesting that cookies will be disabled for any
images/js/xhr etc inside a page. That would make a ton of websites unusable in
any event.

The whole point is moot anyway, as you can track users pretty accurately
without using cookies.

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mattmaroon
It supports normal first party cookie use, but easily blocks third-party
cookies. This prevents people like Google from using their own cookies on
third party sites.

So right now when you go to, say, autoblog (supposing it uses Google) Google
reads some cookie they gave you to figure out who you are, and stores in a db
that you went there. Then when you go to Myspace, they read the cookie again,
look it up in the db, and know to serve you an ad for cars.

If MSFTs feature were enabled by default, this would be blocked. They could,
of course, workaround it somehow, but could they do so while still making
installation of Adsense for autoblog as easy as tossing in some js code?
That's the threat.

If you want a more detailed technical explanation than I'm capable of giving
you, I'm sure you can Google it :)

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axod
Yeah I don't think google will need to work too hard to fix that one :/

Unless MS removes even more standards support from the browser like disabling
dom methods from js, you'll always be able to toss in some js.

Also it would mean that statcounters, certain iframe login mechanisms etc
would be broken in IE.

It'd be pretty cool if IE does become crippled in this way though, less IE
users == less headaches.

