It's not that I disagree that a more robust, established standard would have been more resistant to this attack, I just don't think that you can build a robust,

It's not that I disagree that a more robust, established standard would have been more resistant to this attack, I just don't think that you can build a robust, established standard without first getting people to use it. I disagree that there was ever any possibility, Microsoft or not, that this was ever going to turn into something with teeth. To get to the point where DNT would reasonably be called a widespread standard, people would need to use it. And as soon as people started to use it, ad networks would come up with an excuse to ignore it. My feeling is that Microsoft just happened to be that excuse. On a more optimistic note, I do think we got a few things out of DNT. We learned a valuable lesson about self-regulation -- so nowadays, Safari and Firefox aren't asking anyone's permission to block trackers and fingerprinting and they're doing it in ways that advertisers can't just decide to ignore. DNT is valuable in the sense that it's what we can point to when advertisers complain that they don't have a seat at the table anymore.