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Professor Barrett said part of the problem was that the US and EU operate in very different ways. "US firms follow the Harvard school of competition: find a market, dominate that market and then use that domination to beat the competition into submission. "US firms come here, speak the same language (especially in Britain), and think they are working in an identical environment. "They're not, because in Europe, that type business model isn't remotely fair."

VeriSign, one of the guardians of the networked world, believes these bugs exist because the general level of security is just not high enough. "This is a testament to making consumer products useable and user friendly, which means security has to be relaxed a little," said VeriSign's chief technology officer Ken Silva. "If all the security measures were deployed that should be deployed, they would become too annoying and too difficult for most consumers."

Web searchers are smart," Jansen said. "They have a good idea what Web ads are and how to distinguish them from other links."

Other challenges include the fact that Dogpile may not be representative of web search engine users in general.