September 21, 2006 | Thursday

Time for a new browser or the end to behavioural targeting in search?

By Richard Gregory - COO  in Search Engines |Search Expertise

The growing concerns over internet privacy, and more specifically search privacy (this story really drove it home for me), are finally leading to a small backlash.

While I’d already heard of the Tor server as a way of anonymizing web surfing (although it stopped people searching on Google), this new browser makes it more accessible to users.

But will this hit the mainstream browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox? Will new versions of these browsers integrate anonymous browsing capablites to meet consumer demand?

I think that is highly unlikely. Microsoft is pushing heavily into search and Google has a well publicised partnership with Firefox.

Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN are keen to track as much user behaviour as possible with the itent of producing more relevant search results by better understanding peoples intent when searching.

Time for a new browser or the end to behavioural targeting in search?

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