throwaway900

Indeed. I think we need to be a bit more nuanced about what we ask for.

Simple referrer information is very valuable to the Guardian (and others who sell ads), and is in most circumstances not a significant privacy leak. Cross-site tracking via third-party cookies, however, has significant privacy implications.

I would like to see a user/advertiser understanding of "this far and no further". But unfortunately the debate is sufficiently polarised I can't see any change to the current situation, where the tech-savvy disable everything and the less experienced stick with their defaults, which effectively reduces it to an arms race between the big browser manufacturers and a handful of ad networks.

It kind of is. The Guardian is funded by advertising and this limits their ad sales story. As the article points out, the main beneficiary of this is Google - who are essentially competing with the Guardian for ad sales. I don't always agree with the Graun, but I believe in plurality rather than a Google-dominated world.

Throwaway because of inevitable downvotes from the privacy crowd.