MICROSOFT LAUNCHED its much-anticipated Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) browser this week, equipped with a privacy feature that could threaten the advertising model of web search rivals such as Google.
Users of the new browser can opt to access websites in private, hiding their personal details from search engines that use the information for advertising purposes.
The feature, called InPrivate, has been dubbed in some blog postings as "porn mode", because it also hides the browsing history from other people using the same computer.
However, Microsoft points to examples of buying birthday presents or searching for medical ailments as areas where InPrivate was also of benefit to customers.
John Curran, a director at Microsoft UK, said: "Some people will always want to be InPrivate, but there is a trade-off."
Google has faced an outcry over the amount of information it collects from users of its services.
David Mitchell, an information technology analyst at Ovum, said: "If the hype around privacy gains more credibility, more people will hit the private button. There is a potential threat here to click-through advertising."
IE8 will be available for public download as a "beta" version, but Microsoft would not commit to a date for the software to be bundled with Windows.
Several of the features in IE8 are reminiscent of open source rival browser Firefox, including the use of customised and site-specific searches in a feature called Visual Search. Microsoft yesterday denied it had copied features from rivals' products.
Microsoft's worldwide share of browser usage is 73 per cent, with Firefox on 19 per cent, according to Net Applications, a web consultancy and applications provider.
- (Financial Times service)
