You don't think users should have control over their own property? Oh, come on there is a limit. I mean; the only reason this is big news is because Google sup

You don't think users should have control over their own property? Oh, come on there is a limit. I mean; the only reason this is big news is because Google supplies a lot of sites with analytics. If a site uses another service then this opt out is useless (in terms of them not being tracked). Additionally they are providing all this data to the site directly - Google is just the aggregator some webmasters choose. This is, in fact, about people preferring Google not having their information. Which is a fair enough point (if I visit XYZ.com I don't implicitly agree to provide my data to Google). I think there is a fair gentlemans agreement in place; whereby website owners have a "reasonable expectation" to be able to see what kind of users are accessing a site. If we start calling that personal information I suspect it will start to turn into a Mexican stand off of users hiding data and webmasters trying to sneak it out of them :) A friend of mine pointed out a useful metaphor: it is like a customer dressing in baggy clothing, using a ski mask and voice modulator and then sneaking into a shop to buy something with gold pieces - because they don't want to provide demographics to the shop owner. Sure it is their right; but it also doesn't benefit anyone :)