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>we don’t know what the user wants

How about they ask their users on first install?

So everyone clicks "no" (or gets confused and asks a technical relative), Firefox always sends the DNT header, so no sites respect it.

>or gets confused and asks a technical relative

Isn't that a good thing for users to know about tracking? Firefox can always include some small popup help with the prompt explaining the DNT.

>so no sites respect it

But they will lose a big excuse(it's default) not to support it.

Unlikely to happen, since all their revenue of more than hundred million dollars a year comes from Google, which stands to lose big if that feature is implemented.

Opera and Chrome stand to lose too, so that won't happen there. Bing's revenues(and MSN.com etc.) also stand to lose with it, but looks like MS is okay with it.

The only exception with no stake in all this is Apple, which has already implemented third party cookie blocking in iPhone Safari(and Google got some heat for circumventing it).

Edit: On further thought, Apple does get a cut from Google being the default search, but it's probably such a miniscule part of their revenues that they can easily forgo in the name of doing the right thing for their users.

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