"A measure of our acceptance of ads-in-disguise if ever there was one. We see the ads. We just don't realise they're ads."
Over the past few days, I've looked on in bewilderment as yet another new… ahem, "private" search engine entered the market. This one's called You.com, and it's an annoying, heavily-bankrolled spyware den with conditional access, forcible key-logging (i.e "search suggestions"), micro-monitoring of users' page actions, and in default mode, both Bing and Azure loading their trackers on the page. Yet people have taken the brand's "private" headline seriously, and the buzz appears to be flying - much to the frustration of one or two long-established rivals.
I was wondering how comical the privacy-washing genre would have to become before the first wave of privacy brands started grumbling…