[aaronsw]

The dishonesty of this statement is stunning. IE is designed to only accept the cookie if Google promises not to use it for tracking. Google wants to use the cookie for tracking so they provide a dishonesty promise and then explain they're lying because IE didn't have them in mind -- when this is exactly what IE had in mind.

[narrator]

99% of people leave their settings at the default and don't give a damn and just want it to work. When it doesn't work it's broken. Period, end of story. They will say: "Shut up with your geeky explanation" when you explain to them your options. There may be a really long complicated answer as to why it doesn't work but 99% of users don't gives a crap. If you are a smart guy you can just use ad block. There, done.

Microsoft is very well aware of the fact that users never change the default settings and IMHO would love to use this to break Google by default and destroy their business model. This fits in well with the usual MS tactics of spreading paranoia, incompatibility, legal threats, obfuscation and confusion.

IMHO, Microsoft would love to exploit privacy fears to remove features from the web and break it so everyone just goes back to the desktop. In my opinion, if they could get away with breaking an ajax call, because hey they might be tracking you, they would in order to kill usability of web software in favor of the desktop software model. They will try anything they possibly can to win.

Did you ever see the list of IE6 features that got canned (e.g "Smart Tags") because of the antitrust investigation? It makes me shudder what the web would be like with these jerks in control.