Microsoft web browser that covers its tracks could hit Google’s advertising
business.timesonline.co.uk
business.timesonline.co.uk
People are really eager to find MS conspiracies to write about. I guess if you're a tech journalist, it's kind of like the white whale of your industry.
So everything is actually still there, just not present in the UI? Seems pretty silly if so.
Cookies and browser history aren't saved locally(is my guess of IE8, I haven't used it), but the ISP and/or Website could still have a record of your visit which could be obtained by the police.
It's a very confusing article, probably plain wrong.
They're just, you know, shy and unsure of what to say. Should they commit to this relationship? They've been burned before.
How exactly? I don't get it. I supposed they just turn off local cache and local browsing history...
Contextual advertising just does not work the way the article supposes it does.
Google serves ads there largely based on context from previous pages you visited. For instance, if you searched on Google for "digital camera" and then later went to YouTube, they might show you ads for digital cameras.
Many big ad networks do this. Browsers blocking that would greatly lower CPMs.
However, a browser that doesn't support cookies correctly, isn't very useful.
The browsers history is completely irrelevant.
From the article: "others using the same computer will not be able to see which sites have been accessed."
That is not the same as "Cookies sent from google will no longer work"
Now for Google to track you as you move around the web, they'll have to do a lot more than simply give people a JS snippet to slap in their pages. That's the point. It won't make it impossible for them, but it could make it impractical.
The article probably didn't explain it so well because it was aimed at a non-technical audience.
Look. Either it does, or it doesn't. Either the cookie that google told the browser about is sent back to google as defined in the RFC, or it is not.
"It just doesn't send your info to every third party site that has a pixel on the page."
What info?? The cookie that was previously set by the 3rd party site?
You seem to be muddily suggesting that cookies will be disabled for any images/js/xhr etc inside a page. That would make a ton of websites unusable in any event.
The whole point is moot anyway, as you can track users pretty accurately without using cookies.
So right now when you go to, say, autoblog (supposing it uses Google) Google reads some cookie they gave you to figure out who you are, and stores in a db that you went there. Then when you go to Myspace, they read the cookie again, look it up in the db, and know to serve you an ad for cars.
If MSFTs feature were enabled by default, this would be blocked. They could, of course, workaround it somehow, but could they do so while still making installation of Adsense for autoblog as easy as tossing in some js code? That's the threat.
If you want a more detailed technical explanation than I'm capable of giving you, I'm sure you can Google it :)
Unless MS removes even more standards support from the browser like disabling dom methods from js, you'll always be able to toss in some js.
Also it would mean that statcounters, certain iframe login mechanisms etc would be broken in IE.
It'd be pretty cool if IE does become crippled in this way though, less IE users == less headaches.