It seems that the upcoming IE8 is going to have a privacy tool which will allow people to block companies that track them around the internet.
Accidental Ad Blocker - Post I.T. - A Technology Blog From The Washington Post - (washingtonpost.com)
To me this is a very sneaky way of hurting companies that make their revenues from advertising and is going to trash the industry. If I was at Microsoft, I would do just exactly this.
My guess is that it will allow users to decide in masses whether they want to be tracked and monitored by Google by questioning their preferences.
Microsoft could even update your browser and block Google's ads, analytics and other tracking. That would cut the revenues and air supply to both of these companies.
With this in mind I think IE8 is going to be impressive and is going to give Firefox a run for its money.
The question is whether MS will have to guts to block them an make a huge hole in their balance sheets and send their stocks plummeting.