Google Inc., though a bit slow in jumping on the wagon, is finally adding the Do Not Track feature in their next version of Chrome.  This move is to honor their agreement with the Obama Administration early this year to add a DNT tool to their browser.

“We undertook to honor an agreement on DNT that the industry reached with the White House early this year,” Google spokesman Rob Shilkin said in in an e-mail to AllTHingsD.  “To that end we’re making this setting visible in our Chromium developer channel, so that it will be available in upcoming versions of Chrome by year’s end.”

Do Not Track is a tool that will allow users to opt out of having their cookie tracked.  Internet cookies log your web activities so advertisers use them so they can direct ads to consumers based on their activities.  And this is the reason why a lot of users get plagued by annoying ads.

The Federal Communications Commission wants consumers to be protected from prying eyes and they support DNT but there are still a lot of issues surrounding this.

The most discussed issue comes from the default setting of DNT.  Microsoft got bombarded with a lot of negatives comments when they stated that they would launch Internet Explorer 10 with the DNT feature “On by Default”.  A lot of advertising companies stated that Microsoft is not thinking about advertisers.  The Digital Advertising Alliance, the group that represents advertisers, stated that it was a one-sided decision that will greatly affect users.

“The DAA is very concerned that this unilateral decision by one browser maker – made without consultation within the self-regulatory process – may ultimately narrow the scope of consumer choices, undercut thriving business models, and reduce the availability and diversity of the Internet products and services that millions of American consumers currently enjoy at no charge,” the DAA said in a previous statement.

Most people do not tinker with the settings of their browser so if a feature is on or off by default, there’s a huge chance that they don’t even change the setting of that feature or they don’t even know that their browser have that feature.  So what many wants to happen is for DNT to be shipped neither on or off, like it’s in a neutral position.  So when users update their browsers, they will be prompted to choose whether to turn DNT on or off.  That’s not actually a bad idea but then again, will people really understand what they’re opting in or out of?

Another important issue is with regards to the browser makers and advertisers themselves.  The thing we have to understand about DNT is that it is a consumer’s choice that can well be ignored by advertisers and browser makers.

When DNT is set on by the user, the users is making a stand to not be tracked, but the question is, will browsers and advertisers really stop tracking users or are there just certain information they won’t be able to track or see?  Just like when Apache Web server stated that they would ignore IE10’s DNT because it was set on by default and it’s not really what their users want.

The point is, even if you set DNT on, if advertisers and web browsers want to track you, they can and they will.  So what’s the point of turning DNT on when others can easily bypass a consumer’s decision?