IE9's 'Do Not Track' features

IE9's 'Do Not Track' features could become Web standards,

http://www.betanews.com/article/IE9s-Do-Not-Track-features-could-become-Web-standards/1298569808

 

Microsoft leading the way again after how many years? If this was 2005 we would all have laughed together. Google, Apple, Mozilla, I love you. Please never leave us or we're back to the dark ages of crappy MS. Competition rocks.

 

They weren't leading on this one either
http://donottrack.us/ first seen in Firefox addons

 

+1.

 

Look who's back with their new appropriate self-describing signature.

Let's analyze this deeper:
Domain Registration Date: Fri Aug 20 19:55:05 GMT 2010

You can safely assume IE9 had already completed design stage before this date, considering the preview came out shorly after.

On the random chance that this addon was a unique idea, it seems MS had the idea too. But in this case, they actually did something about it, rather than hope the good of the world pushes their idea forward.

 

Look who's back promoting M$ again...
Bu$ine$$ a$ U$ual...

 

Man that post totally countered my argument Yeah, because it's a sin to defend MS, I forgot.

 

A Sin is...to pretend that you are Not a M$ $hill!

 

Well, I think Micro$oft should work on the excessive RAM usage of IE 9 before they try to 'pump up the volume' with gimmicks. Doesn't Ghostery or NoScript achieve the same thing?

This WAS funny though:

"Microsoft benchmark of innovation: Ignore Rugby; Invent American Football; Hide the rulebook."

 

what operating system do you run?

 

On different computers, I run Mac, Windows, Linux, and Jolicloud.
It makes a huge difference when someone is simply running Windows (being just a user)
as opposed to coming here and trying to convince everybody that IE9 and MSE are the best.
Being a Microsoft user is one thing, whereas, being a Microsoft $hill is another thing.

 

You sure got a source for your little assumption as well?

Like where does it say the first preview already had that feature?

Right, MS is so awesome that they already figured out time travel. So the built a time machine, went in the future to check what these Stanford guys were up to, went back and started implementing it. Probably in 2008 or so, because we all know how fast MS is when it comes to implementing new features in IE.

This was not the idea of MS, and certainly they didn't coincidently have _exactly_ the same idea at about the same time.

Agreed, let's "analyze this deeper:"
Introduced to the public: 7 Dec 2010 10:10 AM
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/...ivacy-introducing-tracking-protection-v8.aspx

https://addons.mozilla.org/af/firefox/addon/universal-behavioral-advertisi/reviews/
first comment about a beta on November 30, 2009
That's right 2009

Let's see who pushed it to the FTC?
Nope, not MS
Let's see who embraced it and promised to support it?
MS, yes but the other usual suspects as well: Google and Mozilla.

 

Surely you're not trying to suggest to me than a multi-billion dollar corporation like Microsoft doesn't follow a strict Software development process? Note where design comes before Implementation. These aren't hobbyist coders that think of something then implement it the next day, it's a business that has design goals months before implementation. Look at the Windows 8 information flowing around.

That some damn constructive input there, thanks. I was merely noting that MS has done bugger all for innovation lately and is finally picking up the slack, should I be burned to the steak for praising MS for doing something good for a change?

Your evidence is about as good as mine, none. There is no proof of "who thought it first". But one this is for sure, Microsoft implemented, then Mozilla and Google followed. Now that I think of it, same goes for GPU acceleration.

 

Yes, because that's all I do on these forums, praise IE9 and MSE....

Aww, why'd you remove your troll signature?

 

At last, you admitted it. Alleluia...

If there is a Troll (a Micro$oft one), it is evident who has been...
-How much do you get paid for it?
OR
-Are you silly enough to promote IE9 and MSE just for free?

 

I'm sensing some unfounded hate.

 

elapsed,
Ok, so you made a mistake with your conclusion about a random release date of a IE preview version and the date where IE said it would actually support the do not track header that was implemented in unofficial Firefox plugins previously and is now being integrated into the next stable versions of all the 3 major browsers. (BTW I'm very well aware how software release cycles work, though I'm not sure what the comment about hobbyist coders is targeted at...)

I'll not ride on that though and instead help your own arguments a bit:
The fact that Firefox kind of got it first isn't Mozilla's merit at all.
These addons I mentioned were released for Firefox first because that's apparently what the people behind do not track were using. It certainly also helped that the addons API of firefox allow these sort of quite low level modification while Chrome addons and probably IE addons do not. MS isn't leading the pack, but it isn't lagging behind either and preventing progress as some would have suspected.

Don't be surprised if people attack IE because of its history. But with me, you are attacking a strawman. I'm the first to say that the IE dev team got a lot right in the last couple of years. I had a discussion about IE security on this very forum were I was defending IE against all too eager prejudicial opinions.

It's great to see that this feature is backed by 3 big browsers, now what about the other 2? There is really no point in bashing MS. This do not track header is badly needed and needs all the support it gets so the ad networks (Google and MS are one of them...) support it as well.
It absolutely doesn't matter who was first! Though credit still goes to Jonathan Mayer, Arvind Narayanan et al. They came up with the idea and if it wasn't for them we'd maybe be stuck with a large clunky list of opt-out cookies (I think we are anyway, given how MS implemented it if someone actually bothered reading the submission...)

About GPU and browsers:
I think WebGL/Khronos was first. 4th August, 2009:
http://www.khronos.org/news/press/r...ive-hardware-accelerated-3d-graphics-internet
Now, who created WebGL?
Sorry but it wasn't Microsoft. It was Mozilla who started and founded it. And they were according to wikipedia experimenting with a prototype in 2006:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGL#History

Earliest I can find for IE is 16 Mar 2010: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/...latform-preview-available-for-developers.aspx
I grant you that WebGL isn't the same as general GPU accelerated rendering.
Direct* is MS technology so it shouldn't come as a surprise that they could introduce it first. Depending on how you look at it I think Chrome wins this round as they were the first to introduce it in a stable and official release.

However in my view, Direct* technology is non-free and closed technology and like flash it doesn't get my stamp of a approval so I don't really care either way.

 

Thanks for the info, Katio. You learn something new every day.

 

Any thoughts on the effectiveness of Do Not Track in all of the browsers implementing it? More specifically, what about the rumblings that it's too reliant on websites co-operating with it? Is this something that will turn out to be another step forward, or is it another in a long line of attempts that have more bark and less bite, in order to appease the privacy advocates?

 

@dw426
It's too early to say for sure. Given the backing it has now from FTC, W3C and major browser vendors it definitely looks like it will become a bit more than just snake oil.

In any case, we already have the means to prevent targeted advertisements and behaviour tracking with Adblock and similar extensions. DNT is a better option for the advertisers as they still get to sell you ads (just not targeted) as opposed to being blocked completely. So why should they oppose to it?

 

Well, you have a point, they shouldn't. However, since targeted ads seem to be a hot thing in the ad world now, I could see them raising a stink. This may sound incredibly "noob-ish", but I'm not ad expert, so I'll ask: What would happen, if anything, to Google's ads in, say Gmail? They are based on the content of your email (unless it changed, I don't use Gmail anymore), isn't that a form of targeted advertising?

 

The way the do not track "list" is formulated in the submission it gives the impression the scope is limited to "3rd party tracking". Google's behavioural tracking on its own sites however isn't "3rd party". Also the tracking in Gmail (parse messages stored on their server on their servers) is very different from the usual tracking (follow people around the web with cookies). I'm very sure DNT won't change the way ads are delivered on Google's own websites including search, email and youtube.

 

Ahh, I see, thanks for clearing that up. The fact that MOST targeting ads are done by 3rd parties escaped me for some reason. I can see now why Google ads wouldn't be affected on their websites. I've never really been a fan of the way they do it in Gmail, but I guess not much can be done besides not use it( I quit when they started demanding cell numbers, no ifs, and or buts).