Today, Microsoft's Internet Explorer commands 65% of the browser market according to the WSJ. In years past, IE held as much as 95% of the browser market. Browsers like Firefox are growing quickly as IE is slipping. Microsoft wants to hold onto that market domination with IE and looked to make some significant changes in IE8 to set the new version of the browser apart from its peers in terms of privacy.

The IE8 design team proposed to use privacy as a means of gaining back the users that had started to migrate to other browsers. The WSJ Reports that the idea with the IE8 design team was to implement privacy measures that would completely block the tracking of a users actions online and prevent the installation of third party tracking software known as cookies onto the user's computer.

While the IE 8 team though the tactic to block tracking was a great plan for its browser, the ad sales executives felt very differently. A debate was sparked among executives like senior VP Brian McAndrews, the former CEO of aQuantivie, and the IE 8 team.

Microsoft ad execs like McAndrews were reportedly shocked at the IE 8 team's plans for privacy in the new browser. The privacy settings eventually showed up as InPrivate browsing. Originally, the IE8 design team had planned to design the browser in such a way as to ensure that almost everyone who installed IE8 was using the InPrivate feature.

The problem that McAndrews and other advertising execs had was that the blocking of tracking cookies would seriously undermine the ability to track a web users habits online and serve them ads that they were likely to click on. Some felt that the technology would possibly even prevent some ads from being served at all.

With the huge sum Microsoft spent purchasing aQuantitive and the hugely lucrative market for web advertising the marketing execs won out. In the final version of IE8, the user has to start InPrivate browsing each time the web browser is launched. The original version of IE8 was also going to have a feature that would block any third party software that was found on ten consecutive pages visited. The assumption was any software that prolific had to be a tracking application. This was supposedly an effort to ensure that third party software like YouTube videos embedded on a page would be left alone.

Had the IE8 team won, the privacy of web users would likely be more secure today.