SmartNet Blog

Microsoft’s Dean Hachamovitch, the corporate vice president of Internet Explorer, discussed IE9, the browser market, privacy and more at the AllThingsD event at CES today. Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal led off with the plummeting market share of Internet Explorer, specifically concerning reports that Firefox has overtaken IE in Europe. Hachamovitch sidestepped the issue by saying that Microsoft is actually trying to drop the market share of IE6, IE7 and IE8 because it wants people to switch to a more dynamic web with IE9.

The majority of the discussion focused on user privacy, though. It was clear that Hachamovitch wanted to focus on the issue; he wore a shirt with the word “private” emblazoned on the front combined with the IE logo. The first part of the conversation focused on tracking. Hachamovitch made sure to differentiate between two types of tracking: “expected tracking” and “creepy-stalking tracking.” Some tracking is good, he said, citing Pandora as an example. By tracking what songs you listen to, it can create recommendations and customized playlists, one of the big selling points of the streaming radio service. Microsoft wants to have that type of tracking while giving users the option to opt out of certain types of tracking.

Mossberg and Hachamovitch then dived into the ways Microsoft intends to protect user privacy in IE9. One of those features is a button users can click on almost any webpage that will block tracking and cookies from that website. In addition, companies and users can create do-not-track lists. “We think it’s important to have people exercise judgement in making those lists,” Hachamovitch said. In addition to the feature, called Tracking Protection, Microsoft is organizing a roundtable of industry leaders with the University of California, Berkeley, to talk about web and browser privacy. No browser can fully protect from one type of tracking, though: Flash cookies. The only way to stop Flash cookies is to turn off Flash for that specific website, an “extreme move” that many users won’t be willing to do in order to stop tracking.

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