This seems like an unfortunate case of Microsoft looking to what will be the standard several years from now - a good thing for most web technology, given their

This seems like an unfortunate case of Microsoft looking to what will be the standard several years from now - a good thing for most web technology, given their slow browser development speed. However, due to the politics and industry regulation that is still being decided, this will actually sway the direction of DNT and make it useless (as many users have pointed out here). There are two fundamental things to keep in mind: 1) There will always be ads on the internet. We are not moving to a direct pay internet economy anytime soon. 2) Behavior targeting is significantly more effective than other types of targeting including the context based approach heavily favored by privacy advocates. (See http://idaconcpts.com/2011/04/13/behavioral-targeting-doubles-ad-effectiveness/ http://idaconcpts.com/2011/04/13/behavioral-targeting-double...). Because of this, the advertising companies will find ways to keep doing behavior targetting - ranging from the benign like site retargetting to the more troubling association with private data. DNT as an opt out solution is great because it allows people who probably won't click on ads to say they don't want them. Private users and advertising companies both win. But third party cookies exist for a reason and if they are removed from the equation then advertising companies will simply find another way.