In the end, the product planners lost a key part of the debate. The winners: executives who argued that giving automatic privacy to consumers would make it tougher for Microsoft to profit from selling online ads. Microsoft built its browser so that users must deliberately turn on privacy settings every time they start up the software.
A Wall Street Journal investigation of the practice showed tracking to be pervasive and ever-more intrusive:
The 50 most-popular U.S. websites, including four run by Microsoft, installed an average of 64 pieces of tracking technology each onto a test computer.
This is not likely to have any real effect. Textbooks are sold to a captive market. Those who are paying their tuition without benefit of student loans will buy the books without thinking too much about the cost. Those who are going to school on student loans will go into debt.
The Wylie agency signed a deal to exclusively distribute e-books of its authors through Amazon. Want to read Philip Roth, Dave Eggers, Saul Bellow in digital form? Better get a Kindle.
This is all just speculation at this point, but maybe Google Flipper will mend the relationship that Google has had with some newspaper publishers. We'll see . . .