This doesn't have to do with marketing Internet Explorer as being more secure / privacy friendly. Its about using Internet Explorer's still substantial market share to expose the level of tracking that occurs w/out user knowledge. This hurts companies with an advertising business model (google) because it forces them to either explicitly & openly ignore IE's DNT setting, or to turn off tracking and significantly decrease the value of their advertising. From MS's perspective, that's a win-win.
This doesn't have to do with marketing Internet Explorer as being more secure / privacy friendly
Sure it does. When you're losing you need to differentiate, and Microsoft is choosing the "privacy first" route. It's fairly transparent, but it does get them a lot of press (almost all of the "they're really sticking to their principals" variety. At the same time I can't turn on my xbox without endless banners of ads).
From MS's perspective, that's a win-win.
And from a user's perspective it's a short-term win, long-term loss.
I think that the optimal response to IE and DNT is that every ad-supported site puts up a paywall for IE DNT users. If users associated IE with such a negative web experience, its use would quickly crater into the ground.
Fair enough. It is a talking point that puts them on the "right" side of the privacy debate, though I find it hard to believe that people will move from Firefox/chrome because of this feature. Strategically its much more about breaking that which lets companies provide "free" web services, which is something that MS has trouble competing with.
Its interesting that google put out chrome to force all browsers to have substantially better performance, thus expediting the migration from local applications to the "cloud". It seems like Microsoft finally decided to use their position to push something else that people care about (privacy) to slow down that migration.
Its a long term loss for users if you believe that the loss of control & privacy is worth what you get for free services on the web. Not everybody does.
Its interesting that google put out chrome to force all browsers to have substantially better performance, thus expediting the migration from local applications to the "cloud"
That is a great observation. I would also cynically add that Chrome was a response to the growing popularity of AdBlock in Firefox. The reason many were driven to block ads was because it slowed down their browsing (scripts, animated graphics, even the transfer time), so Google kicked up efforts to try to make advertisements less costly in almost every way.
When Chrome was announced, I recall a reporter asked what Google's goal was in terms of market adoption within a year (10%? 20%? market share). They said that misses the point, and they weren't using adoption as metric, but rather they were tracking performance attributes of all browsers (how much better will the web experience get for everybody, regardless of browser). Absolutely brilliant. Now, Microsoft could try to do the same thing on the privacy front. Its a much harder play though.
