Internet Explorer 9 is cleaner, faster, easier to use and may very well be the best version of Internet Explorer ever; but with a lengthy public beta, you probably know all that. What you may not know is that Microsoft has, with , plopped itself right into the middle of the somewhat overheated conversation about online privacy, tracking and trust.

When I first met with Microsoft almost a year ago to see the very early Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview, "tracking" wasn't even mentioned. Instead Microsoft focused on the rearchitecting of the browser. It was so early that they didn't even have an interface to show us. We spent a lot of time talking about hardware-based graphics acceleration, HTML 5 and new graphics and video CSS tags that Web developers might someday use. I remember walking out of there , not so much because I thought Microsoft had solved the riddle, but because I could feel their passion.

Yesterday, I watched as Microsoft Internet Explorer team launched the fully-realized IE9 Release Candidate into the wild. Team leaders, like Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, were all beaming like proud fathers. On this day, they wanted to focus on the changes they'd made to IE 9 since the beta, starting with "Tracking Protection." They also talked about IE 9's new HTML5 geo location chops (based on Windows Phone 7's geo location technology) and work they did to make the interface even more streamlined. However, nothing seemed quite as momentous as the Tracking Protection options.

What's Tracking?

Before you can understand what Microsoft is doing, you need to understand what online tracking is and how the Web uses it. Most websites drop cookies on your system to track your activities and help improve your experience. This is how, for example, Amazon.com, knows which books you browsed and how it can make suggestions about which books might be right for you. However there are sites and services that share some of your activities between sites. This is how one site can display sneaker ads after you visited a footwear section on another site, and it is commonplace. Consumers and the Federal Government, though, have only just woken up to this fact and are apparently disconcerted about the amount of information and detail websites can intuit simply from aggregated browsing habits.

Consumers are concerned, though I don't think they know exactly why. The sensation they're feeling is akin to how Peter Parker's Spidey Sense sometimes makes him feelsomewhat uneasy and on alert. The Federal Trade Commission shares consumers' unease and is moving forward with an online , but again, no one is quite sure what the threat is here. The intent of most sites and services that do track your activities is to serve you highly contextual targeted advertising, not follow you home and steal your prized Chihuahua. Full disclosure: PCMag uses some of these technologies to deliver better advertising to you on our and our partner sites.

In any event, advertisers and browser manufacturers understand better than any of us that the tracking technology is like the Web's nervous system. If you simply rip it out, the Web could become a very dull place where the sentient nature of some of your favorite websites and best bargains goes dark and stupid. But I digress.

Track Lists Arrive

Instead of shying away from the controversy, Microsoft dove in with both feet and built a Tracking Protection system right into the browser. Mind you, it's not visible on the default interface. I had to dig into Safety settings to find it. It's also not on by defaulta good thingand though you can set up a personalized list, I think most people will opt to suck in one of the third-party do not track lists Microsoft's providing. What that really gets you, though, I don't know. The lists come from third-party companies like TRUSTe that have been in this game a fairly long time. I guess we can "Trust" them to be the arbiters of good tracking actors. In fact, as Microsoft execs described the feature, they did some equivocating, noting that "there's good tracking and bad tracking." I wondered aloud on Twitter who would judge between the good and bad. Twitter responded with its usual mixed of good sense and nonsensical humor:

"Judge Ito," said one. "Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul," said another.

I honestly don't think this or any other Tracking stratagem is going to do consumers a lick of good. Not that I don't give Microsoft and its competitors points for trying.

During the launch event, I had a fascinating discussion with Hachamovitch about this new Tracking Protection initiative. Hachamovitch is upbeat about the new feature. He carefully explained the difference between IE's InPrivate browsing feature and Tracking Protection. InPrivate Browsing hides your browsing activities from someone else who might sit down at your computer. Tracking Protection is hiding your casual activities from outside/online entities. Then Hachamovitch tried to explain what he thinks consumers and the online industry actually want. He told me it's really not a matter of track or do not track. Instead, it's more about "expected and unexpected" tracking and also about transparency. People need to know they're being tracked, he said, and what info the sites and services are grabbing and how they use it. Hachamovitch explained that Microsoft chose these third-party lists sites to manage who to trust and not trust so consumers do not have to make specific "do not track" decisions. Users can, if they choose, make their own lists, but Microsoft is not, Hachamovitch explained, planning on making its own list.

Hachamovitch makes a reasonable case. From my point of view, though, this is all nonsense. I don't care if sites are tracking me and presenting ads that they think will help me buy the right kind of outerwear for my next trip to the Olympic National Rain Forest. I just don't see how that's a bad thing. People love when they get personal care at a supermarket or mall, but online they don't want any help? Many people know your age, your job, your gender, your likes and dislikes. Funny thing is, that many of those same people can't use that information to help you in any way. Online, that knowledge can trigger an action: you see an ad for something you care about as opposed to another prestitial about belly fat.

The Pizza Syndrome

All this was bouncing around my head as Hachamovitch spoke and I felt pretty self-satisfied until he spun the tracking concept on its head with a little anecdote he heard from some European government security agencies about why some people are really afraid of online tracking technology.

"It's called the Pentagon Pizza Syndrome" said Hachmovitch. The security wonks told Hachamovitch about this old-school espionage concept where you watch Washington DC Pizza joints to monitor if the Pentagon is ordering a lot of pizzas late at night. With that little bit of info, you could guess that that something is going on in the world. If you know where in the Pentagon all those pizzas are going, you might have an even more specific idea. The same concept can work online. These security agencies told Hachamovitch that they want to make sure that no one can look at a defense ministry online and see how many IP's from that building are suddenly checking the weather in Afghanistan for next week. In other words, this kind of tracking could lead to the unwitting exposure of potential military plans. Now my Spidey Sense was tingling.

Still, there's a world of difference between the commerce-based tracking most of the Web surfing world encounters and Hachamovitch tale. These first attempts at Do Not Track lists are laudable in a way, but also incredibly clumsy and unlikely to do much more than slowly make the Internet seem a little less prescient. I wonder why that's considered a good thing.