One difference is that Web browser history has been there 30 years, since before most people at the time had even touched a Web browser.
At the time, it wasn't very thinkable that someone would have the audacity to take and abuse that information.
It dates from when Internet people overall were more savvy about privacy than users overall today are, but it was also when the Internet was closer to a trustworthy environment, and before Wall Street sociopath types took over the tech and the culture.
Lots of kinds of abuse that today are routine and almost universal, for even startup tech companies, (e.g., embedding third-party trackers into Web site, and getting even worse from there), I think would've gotten them ostracized, and outraged demands for criminal charges.
During the dotcom gold rush, there was such a flood of totally new, posturing people, and so much money being thrown wildly at everything, that any remaining outrage was lost in the noise.
And now virtually no one knows any different.
But if you're trying to push some new abuse today, I think ordinary people are starting to have some awareness of what vicious sociopathic buttholes tech companies have become, and so acceptance might not be a slam-dunk.