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Microsoft killed DNT by enabling it by default in IE. I was working for one of the largest web analytics companies at the time, and we were fully prepared to su
by necubi 8y ago
Microsoft killed DNT by enabling it by default in IE. I was working for one of the largest web analytics companies at the time, and we were fully prepared to support it (the code had been written!). But after Microsoft's move it was immediately dead across the industry.
Basically, Microsoft sacrificed consumer privacy as part of its petty feud with Google (and after their own attempts in ad tech went up in flames—taking a $6B write-down on their acquisition of AQuantive).
- danShumway 8y agoAt the risk of being a little combative, I'm going to call this an excuse. Why didn't your company disable it for just IE? It wasn't hard at the time to detect which browser people were using based on headers. You could have checked to see which browsers turned it on by default and ignored them specifically. If IE went the route of trying to make IE's headers imitate Firefox's or something, fine, then disable it for IE and Firefox, but keep it on for Chrome. But the idea that one browser misbehaving meant that suddenly no browsers could be trusted sounds to me like an excuse. Across the industry we build browser-specific behaviors for all kinds of things. What's so special about user tracking that nobody in the industry could do that?
- TeMPOraL 8y agoIt's a nice excuse. Every adtech firm can now say: "But we've been prepared to honor that! Look at us, we tried to play nice, we even wrote the code for it! But then that naughty Microsoft came and ruined it all!". Like if adtech companies weren't literally the best players at figuring out which browser a visitor uses.
- Tsubasachan 8y agoNo offense but your company makes money from tracking people. It is safe to assume that you oppose anything that is threatening to your revenue. You will fight privacy on the internet at every step.