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Personally, I think even without Internet Explorer ruining Do-Not-Track (which I also think Microsoft torpedoed on purpose by making it the default), the tracking companies wouldn't have respected it. They were looking for an excuse not to comply with DNT after promising Congress they would self-regulate, and IE gave them a fig-leaf to go back on their word.

IIRC the argument was that DNT being enabled by default in a browser made its "advisory" nature to the server on the other end even more toothless, because it could be argued that for the majority of users with it enabled, it would not be a signal of any actual decision on their part.

Yeah, fuck them if they can’t take a joke. Aside from all the valid reasons why the spyware is horrid there are also practical reasons. I get virtually no benefit from gigabit Ethernet at the house when surfing the web due to all the extra http requests.