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Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

• Lammy 6y ago
  Personally I never stopped using AWStats to process my nginx access logs. Its appearance is "rustic" for sure, but it provides every statistic I care about: https://www.awstats.org/ https://www.awstats.org/
  • bobitsaboy 6y ago
    Came here to essentially post the same thing. If you're on some form of basic hosting with a Cpanel, you probably already have it installed or a click away. Google can't entice me enough to bother adding load to my sites.
• mellavora 6y ago
  Interestingly, there was an article in the Swedish media this morning basically calling out a number of Swedish governmental ministries for violating Swedish privacy law. The violations were all the use of google analytics.
  • msantos 6y ago
    Something similar happened in the UK sometime ago, but it was mostly brushed off. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/10/no-10-request-user-data-government-website-sparks-alarm https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/10/no-10-request-...
• heipei 6y ago
  Here's a crazy idea: Don't use analytics at all but focus on your product. If your success relies solely on "improving conversions" by tracking your users and then changing the position and color of your "Checkout" button then maybe try setting yourself apart such that customers want to buy your product even despite an obnoxious purchasing flow. Only then start optimizing it. More serious thoughts: Google Analytics introduces performance overhead for your website and now you have to explain to your users which third party is responsible for processing their data on top of yourself. Why introduce those headaches? Are the insights from Analytics really valuable enough to justify the cost? I personally haven't seen it.
  • Enginerrrd 6y ago
    >Here's a crazy idea: Don't use analytics at all but focus on your product. If your success relies solely on "improving conversions" by tracking your users and then changing the position and color of your "Checkout" button then maybe try setting yourself apart such that customers want to buy your product even despite an obnoxious purchasing flow. Only then start optimizing it. This is part of why costco is so successful. When I buy a kirkland brand item, I know with like 95% confidence that I'm getting a quality product. Not only that, but they go through heroic lengths to vet the other products that they put out. If you buy extra virgin olive oil at costco, it's very likely that it's pure extra virgin olive oil. They turned retail on its head after 30 years of abuses by people focused on quarterly earnings and selling their brand into the ground. Instead of making the product as shitty as possible and charging as much as possible, costco hard caps their margins and will then invest money to optimize their suppliers manufacturing process to pass the savings along to their customers. The big thing with costco is trust. I trust them and their products because they've earned it. In the rare event something is wrong with their product, they'll make it right with basically no questions asked. They used to do this to an absurd degree until people started abusing it. Compare that to the amount of vetting I have to do for almost every amazon purchase now. It's a huge headache, and there's a lot of stuff I just won't buy off of amazon anymore.
    • system16 6y ago
      Absolutely. Even though I find the Costco in-store experience stressful and the online experience lacklustre, I put them at the top of my list for all of my non-fashion shopping (unless I'm looking for dad clothes). I can always trust their products will be as high or better quality than anywhere else, and at the best or close to best price. And I have no worries about returns. Compare that to Amazon, which I have zero trust in. I absolutely can't trust the reviews, and I can't trust any products are genuine (even for minor things: my last purchase several months ago were steel wool dish scrubs - name branded, but I'm certain they were fake). I also don't trust them to do anything about it, because I've reported fake reviews, and fake products several times, and all of those sellers are still selling with thousands of 5 star reviews. The only thing it has going for it is price and convenience.
• softwaredoug 6y ago
  My personal site I don’t use any analytics. My metric I care about is whether I’m having an impact on my colleagues and domain. I generally don’t try to mode that quantitatively, I care more about whether it seems people around me are influenced or helped by what I write. If it’s useful to some colleagues, that’s enough for me.
  • weinzierl 6y ago
    I appreciate this attitude. What do you do to know if you have an impact instead of analytics?
    • softwaredoug 6y ago
      One thing I could look at is Moz’s approximation for page authority and look at inbound links. But I don’t care that much about it right now.
  • zserge 6y ago
    If the content of your blog is not too niche - one can easily live without analytics by just looking at the numbers of upvotes on HN/Reddit etc. However, for starters and for very narrow topics some kind of analytics would still be useful to help them grow the audience.
• purpmint008 6y ago
  Sure. But, let's also stop feeding the Apple App Store beast. 15-30% cut for little-to-no value added. Complete monopolization. Can't side-load apps without paying an yearly-fee.
  • nerdjon 6y ago
    Not sure what the relevance too this article is. There is a major difference between someone actively choosing to use an iPhone vs a web developer choosing for you to send your data too Google because they included some script. (Also I would argue the number of security issues that there have been in apps on Android sure helps warrant that cut)
    • gerash 6y ago
      Let's just swap entities in your sentence, shall we: "There's a major difference between someone actively choosing to go to a website vs a phone manufacturer choosing for you what you can and cannot run on your device." QED. Also exploits for latest Android versions are more expensive than latest iOS versions. Let's not conflate topics however
  • b3lvedere 6y ago
    Is there a nice list somewhere that can tell me which beast i should or should not feed?
• marvinblum 6y ago
  I'd like to add https://pirsch.io/ https://pirsch.io/ as an alternative. The main differentiation from Plausible and Fathom is, that it can be used from your backend, so that adblockers can't block the script and you still get GDPR compliant statistics for your websites.
  • heipei 6y ago
    How is it GDPR compliant if you're sending the IP address of the visitor to that service? Not saying that it can't be used, and not saying that they would use / store the IP in a non-hashed way, but at the very least I will still have to disclose (and possibly opt-in approve) the use of that third-party service to my own users.
    • marvinblum 6y ago
      The IP is hashed and deleted after a day: https://docs.pirsch.io/privacy/ https://docs.pirsch.io/privacy/ If you embed a script into your website, the IP of your visitors will also get sent to that service.
    • Symbiote 6y ago
      I think you agree with [1], which says the German data protection regulator doesn't think even "Cookieless pings" to an external service are allowed. It could still be GDPR compliant if you ask permission, but that's clearly not the intention -- the Pirsch homepage says "no cookie banner". [1] https://usercentrics.com/knowledge-hub/google-consent-mode/#but-why-do-i-even-need-consent-for-the-processing-of-personal-data https://usercentrics.com/knowledge-hub/google-consent-mode/#... (See "Can I use...").
  • dbbk 6y ago
    I'm sure Plausible also lets you set a custom domain for the script?
    • marvinblum 6y ago
      Yes, you can use a custom subdomain to serve the script, but browsers/plugins are working on blocking them too (Brave has implemented this already, I think). You won't get around tracking from the backend if you want accurate data.
• raspyberr 6y ago
  It's really tough to read this with any sense of sincerity when it uses Google fonts and "feeds the beast" that is Cloudflare.
  • iamacyborg 6y ago
    And Disqus. It does serve to highlight just how ubiquitous these platforms are though.
  • caspii 6y ago
    Touche. You are absolutely right. I will remove these too, but haven't gotten round it to it yet.
    • raspyberr 6y ago
      In which case, I do agree with a lot of what you say. There are many alternatives to what Google offers for website builders nowadays. It's just most people aren't aware of them. Many guides will just say use Google fonts and use Google analytics.
      • ehnto 6y ago
        I found third party CDNs were almost always the cause when my personal site felt slow. My personal server responds quickly every time, because it's not subject to the same heavy traffic fluctuations that CDNs are. To that end, I serve all the font files from the server and run a self-hosted analytics tool. Most Google fonts are just conveniently hosted fonts from third-party foundries, so it's not like you are supporting Google by downloading them.
  • caspii 6y ago
    Disqus has just been switched off!
  • layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
    Well, what did you expect them to use? The built-in system fonts of the user??? :S
• philistine 6y ago
  I never installed Analytics on my personal website, and I instead get data out of the Google chimera instead of putting data into it. How? I look at my Google Search Console numbers to give me just enough data to figure out what works or not on my website.
• blainsmith 6y ago
  I've been using https://www.goatcounter.com https://www.goatcounter.com and it works great. Nice and simple and I can turn off some tracking features for things I don't care about.
  • foofoo4u 6y ago
    I've heard good things about goatcounter. https://umami.is/ https://umami.is/ is another popular alternative to Google Analytics that I happen to use. I've been happy with it.
• tristor 6y ago
  After a recent story on HN about all the horrible tracking Disqus started to do after being acquired by an ad-tech company, I ditched it and Google Analytics on my semi-dormant personal website. The process of fixing it got me interested in working on my site again and I ended up upstreaming the patches into the Hugo theme I use[1], so now everyone with that theme can benefit easily. I ended up using GoatCounter[2] after examining several alternatives in the market, predominantly because it was free for personal sites, but also because it was very no-frills which is all I really needed. I also appreciated that I could control retention rate and other configuration that might affect my visitor's privacy to collect as minimal amount of information as possible. I don't think there's anything wrong with having basic site analytics, but I appreciate that there are now alternatives to Google Analytics that don't try to do the pervasive tracking that's become commonplace online. [1]: https://tristor.ro/blog/2021/02/05/ditching-google-analytics-for-goatcounter/ https://tristor.ro/blog/2021/02/05/ditching-google-analytics... [2]: https://www.goatcounter.com/ https://www.goatcounter.com/
  • dna_polymerase 6y ago
    Congrats, now you give your visitor‘s data to goatcounter instead of Google. If that catches on we might see this article about them in the future. Remove stats altogether, pay for your website stats, or roll your own. Just exchanging the free script isn‘t doing anything.
    • LocalH 6y ago
      It's open source and can be self-hosted. It doesn't require relying on their hosting.
      • dna_polymerase 6y ago
        Sure, but that‘s not what OP is using.
    • notsobig 6y ago
      have you heard of FOSS?
• z92 6y ago
  Parse your server's access log file. The way it had been done for decades. "Analog" was popular then, Should be better options now.
  • jaywalk 6y ago
    My server's access logs are almost useless when I've got an SPA with a significant amount of client-side functionality.
    • sim_card_map 6y ago
      Don't use SPAs, switch back to traditional server side rendering.
      • jaywalk 6y ago
        No.
        • arcturus17 6y ago
          Succinct, but straight to the point.
    • eggtro 6y ago
      Well that's your own fault for using inferior technologies.
  • zserge 6y ago
    I have been using this for a while, GoAccess is a wonderful little tool to automate the parsing. Highly recommend to those who prefer the old-school approach towards web analytics. https://goaccess.io/ https://goaccess.io/
    • itwy 6y ago
      Thank you for sharing this.
    • 6y ago
• boffinism 6y ago
  I really didn't want to use Google Analytics for a personal site (details in bio), but because it's a non-monetised personal site I really didn't want to spend money to know how many visitors I had, but because I'm trying to learn about content I really did want to know how many visitors I had, because that's a good way of discovering what content resonates etc. I tried PanelBear, but because I briefly hit the front page of HN I blew through their free tier in less than a day. I wish there was something very basic that had a more generous free tier. At the moment my site literally apologises for using GA.
  • zserge 6y ago
    I am currently working on exactly this! I have always been dreaming of a low-cost, zero-effort web analytics. So far I have made an open source library/service, I've been using it for my blog and a few other sites for over two months. It is available at https://github.com/nullitics/nullitics https://github.com/nullitics/nullitics. You can see the example dashboard (fed with real data) at https://nullitics.com/dashboard/zserge.com https://nullitics.com/dashboard/zserge.com. I'm now collecting all sorts of feedback from the early adoperts. For the cloud version I decided to go with 1€/month, and I have often been criticised for choosing such a low price. However, I believe that I would rather be at a lower profit, but help bloggers, hackers and other who want such a tool.
    • amzans 6y ago
      Hey it's nice you're offering this! I'd just be careful with ultra-low prices, specially if you plan on having backups and multiple months/years of data retention. Infrastructure costs alone can add up really fast, and don't underestimate how many hours of support a single customer might require. Just friendly advice :)
  • amzans 6y ago
    Hey I'm happy you gave Panelbear a try! It's always nice to hear someone is using what I've built. Regarding the free tier, I decided to offer it after hearing many people saying "I wish there was a free alternative for a blog that gets less than <50k views per year" :) There's no strings attached. Only volume limits and shorter data retention (to prevent my AWS costs from blowing up). About traffic spikes (eg. reaching the front page of HN): even if you go over the limits, the system won't start rate limiting you for another 72 hours - that way you won't lose data during traffic spikes. Hope it helps!
• throw_awy_1 6y ago
  Another idea: also stop using Google to show ads on your web site (adsense). As the article states, you get to decide how much tracking your visitors are subjected to.
  • partiallypro 6y ago
    Google owns the digital ad market with no real competitors, you would have to move to a subscription model to make money. Good luck with that, unless you feed another beast like Substack.
    • throw_awy_1 6y ago
      Would agree Google Adsense is the giant but they still have competition. A quick search on duckduckgo revealed at least some to investigate. Note - many of these are probably just as scummy or moreso than adsense but they, at a minimum, are not part of Google. Media.net PropellerAds Amazon Native Shopping Ads Adversal Sovrn //Commerce (Formerly VigLink) Skimlinks Monumetric InfoLinks ylliX Evadav PopCash PopAds RevContent Adsterra SHE Media AdRecover MadAds Media Bidvertiser Adbuff BuySellAds AdClickMedia
      • partiallypro 6y ago
        Most of those in your list have very low payouts and have incredibly spammy links
• Jerard_Victor 6y ago
  Next stop is to remove Disqus
  • caspii 6y ago
    Correct . I will move to https://talk.hyvor.com https://talk.hyvor.com soon.
    • caspii 6y ago
      Update: I just did!
• lmkg 6y ago
  I have high confidence that Google does not dip into Analytics data for its own uses without permission. I am an analytics consultant by profession, so this opinion is colored by the old adage about not understanding something that prevents your paycheck. But it is also colored by a decade of experience with the technical and organizational capabilities and limitations of the tool. Let me lay out my reasoning. 1. Legal and contractual liability. For the Analytics service, Google is a Processor under GDPR and a Service Provider under CCPA. This means that legally, the only thing they are allowed to do with the data is provide the service requested by their customers. Many enterprise-level customers require this as a condition of using Google Analytics. If they were to breach this confidence, it would probably result in them losing the enterprise space as a whole. 2. Google Analytics data is first-party data. There are no means for Google to stitch together panopticon view of a user from the GA data from different companies. The user identifier is a first-party cookie, which is not shared between sites. There are no side-channels. Believe me, I literally spend at least five hours every week staring at hits in the Network tab, and I know where every piece of data comes from and how it gets processed. Cookies are not shared between sites except manually, and then only between sites operated by the same company. 3. Low signal-to-noise ratio. The median Google Analytics implementation is a dumpster fire. When I engage with a new website, it's actually more common than not that they have double-tracking (or triple or more) on at least some pages, which completely kills the accuracy of bounce rate and time-on-page metrics. Even "good" implementations have a huge amount of variability between the data. 4. They can probably get the data elsewhere. Google acts as a Controller for several of its other products (notably, Google Ads aka AdWords), meaning that it explicitly acknowledges it does use the data for its own purposes. And Chrome syncs your browsing history to your Google account. While Google Analytics would get them extra coverage, the cost-benefit doesn't seem worthwhile to me, especially consider the GDPR angle. 5. That's not why it's free There's a common theme in posts like these about "why do you think Google gives GA away for free?" implying that they do it for the data. Website analytics is a strategic compliment to website advertising. If people can see how much money they make from ads (and moreso, optimize how much money they make from ads), then they will buy more ads. Google makes money from Analytics as a strategic compliment. They do not need to acquire your data for it to be profitable. Nowadays it's also an integration point with other services in the marketing cloud. See "caveats" below. CAVEATS Everything above is about the "default" Google Analytics installation, how it works out of the box. Google Analytics allows you to share data with Google in a variety of way, and actively encourages you to do so for several of those. I'll enumerate the specific points where a particular configuration of Google Analytics has significant privacy impacts. 1. Advertising Features. This establishes a "cookie match" between the first-party GA cookie and the third-party DoubleClick cookie. Meaning it connects your GA data to Google's own data. 2. Google Ads integrations This establishes several data connections to the Google Ads dataset, in both directions. Google explicitly acknowledges they act as a Controller for this integration, i.e. it's their data know and they can use it. 3. Google Signals Hoooooo boy. This is the setting that explicitly connects data to a user's Google Account. If a user is logged in to Google in Chrome (meaning logged in to the browser), then Google Analytics can use their account as the identity signal instead of a cookie. So the data from this one actually could be aggregated across different GA properties. The Google Account can also be used as the basis for targeting advertising. Concluding Thoughts Using Google Analytics "feeds the beast" insofar as it continues to cement Google's hegemony on the Internet. If you want to ditch GA for that reason, I completely sympathize. But saying it "feeds the beast" in that Google actually acquires that data and uses it, borders on a conspiracy theory. There are plenty of good and valid reasons to ditch GA based on principles, and on statements that can be backed up on evidence. There's no need to overreach. GA is overkill for most small websites. Its main value is to integrate with Google advertising products (to re-iterate: the buttons that do that are off by default but very easy to press). I don't think that logfile parsing is as accessible as many people seem to believe, but there's now a strong landscape of privacy-conscious analytics tools that didn't exist five years ago, which will provide at least the simple metrics that personal websites actually need. The web would probably be better if Google Analytics stopped being the "default." But that's more about the monoculture of available tools, rather than extending Google's ubiquitous surveillance apparatus.
• iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago
  I'm coming around to the idea that Google (and Facebook etc) need to be called out and held accountable for the "negative externalities" that come with their business model, the same as if a company was polluting the physical environment. Google has turned much of the internet into a wasteland (there are examples as it related to news in the article but this is true for most content). They don't have to pay for this pollution, but it literally affects everyone in the world. The internet at this point is a vital part of people's lives, and when we see companies doing the equivalent of dumping chemical waste into it, we should more actively rebuke them.
  • jcampbell1 6y ago
    Don't forget the extortion racket Google runs by advertising competitors on navigational queries. If you are a small business you are familiar with their mafiosa sales practices. They give new employees "google supremacy" training so their employees can engage in abusive practices without thinking twice. I have never met people as brainwashed as an Adwords account manager. I have one friend who started calling her husband a Gouche after he got a job at google. Much better term than Noogler.
  • Simplicitas 6y ago
    Thanks for succinctly recapping the core issue here. Another externality from all this is the growth of misinformation, which our species seems so unaware and defenseless against.
    • missedthecue 6y ago
      I seem to recall conspiracy theories abounding in the days of Usenet
      • harry8 6y ago
        Yeah and most of our families were into usenet. Usenet also pioneered tailoring what to show to maximize "engagement" so the number of people taken in by conspiracies has actually decreased now. Thanks google. Thanks facebook. You always know what's best for us!
• dna_polymerase 6y ago
  Caspii, you should disclose that some of the links in your article are actually affiliate links. Actually I think in Germany you are required to do so.
• system16 6y ago
  I've had so many clients from small companies to hobbyists convinced it's critical that Google Analytics be installed on their websites. Some even horrified when suggesting they don't need it. In most cases, the results aren't even looked at or acted upon, so this bloat is just sitting there and feeding Google data with little in return.
  • tobiaslins 6y ago
    you could use analytics such as https://splitbee.io https://splitbee.io :) ux is great and you can use it without being a data scientist
    • system16 6y ago
      When suggesting a product, I think it's typically best practice to disclose when you are the founder.
• pwg 6y ago
  google analytics, and doubleclick, are two locations that have permanent, global, block rules in uBlock Origin on my browser.
• tobiaslins 6y ago
  For those who are searching for a GA alternative that can also be used as app analytics tool be sure to check out https://splitbee.io https://splitbee.io It also allows cookie-free tracking :)
  • ehnto 6y ago
    Self-hosted Matomo is a good alternative in PHP land. Being PHP it makes it pretty easy to deploy on a VPS and use it as analytics for all your projects. That also puts you in control of it's performance and impact on your users. You can also use a server-log only mode which uses zero client-side snippets/pixels to do the tracking work. https://matomo.org/matomo-on-premise/ https://matomo.org/matomo-on-premise/
    • Pawka 6y ago
      Or even run it in a container anywhere. A while ago (when Matomo was named "Piwik") I had it running in a stateless containers (db was provided as a service).
• chubot 6y ago
  When I started https://www.oilshell.org/ https://www.oilshell.org/ I added Google Analytics because it was easy, and because it was something I'd seen a lot of other people do. After actually using the web interface, I found it almost useless for getting feedback about my site. So I switched it off and haven't missed it at all. Instead I simply analyze my own logs with a Python program. (There a bunch of lightweight alternative services that I could have considered, but my scheme works and is customizable) I was lazy about this and should have done it much earlier, so I encourage others to do the same. ----- It should also save energy because your user's phone doesn't have to make a connection to another server. The original hit to http://www.oilshell.org/ http://www.oilshell.org/ has all that's necessary for logging. (no cookies in this case, but there could be if you want) Google analytics were so prevalent that the NSA used the cookies to track (or attempt to track) the entire population: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10/nsa-uses-google-cookies-to-pinpoint-targets-for-hacking/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10... If you simply don't include the analytics, then your users won't be subject to such threats. (this threat may be mitigated by now, but who knows if there's a similar one. If you don't need it, the easiest way is to not use the service)
• tlarkworthy 6y ago
  How do people to Google Ad conversion metrics without the GA tie in?
  • marvinblum 6y ago
    You can still track campaigns using utm query parameters.
    • tlarkworthy 6y ago
      And Google ads ui updates?
      • marvinblum 6y ago
        You're probably right, there is nothing to fully replace it. But maybe we don't have to and build something new and better instead.
• carapace 6y ago
  On a tangent, but related IMO: the whole WWW seems gross now. The other day on that Mold linker project: > I wanted to use the linker to link a Chromium executable with full debug info (~2 GiB in size) just in 1 second. LLVM's lld, the fastest open-source linker which I originally created a few years ago, takes about 12 seconds to link Chromium on my machine. As much as I like that linker project, I can't help but feel it's like a pothead buying a bigger pipe: you're just going to smoke more weed. How can it make sense in a sane world for a web browser to take up more space than entire operating systems? Red ( https://www.red-lang.org/ https://www.red-lang.org/ ) and Factor ( https://factorcode.org/ https://factorcode.org/ ) among many others deliver comparable capabilities in ~1M. - - - - The Gemini project is one interesting alternative. Every once in awhile I wonder what the folks using Urbit are up to in there. But for the masses of unwashed users out there I think they're stuck with it. I feel like we are seeing the genesis of cyborg AIs with humans for neural nodes.
  • jahewson 6y ago
    Why compare a web browser with a programming language? An equivalently rich OS would be a meaningful comparison, built with full debug symbols.
    • carapace 6y ago
      > Why compare a web browser with a programming language? Javascript? - - - - RED and Factor both provide single binaries of about 1M that have all the capabilities that a browser has, including a built-in programming language.
  • ayewo 6y ago
    You ask: "How can it make sense in a sane world for a web browser to take up more space than entire operating systems?" The last 30 years of the web has slowly evolved the web browser into its own operating system. Google Chrome is now a pretty hefty code base that depends on distributed builds [1] for compilation to complete in a timely manner. The fact that Microsoft threw in the towel [2] and decided to build on top of Chrome is testament to the enormous man-years that has been put into Chrome. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14734171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14734171 2: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/12/06/microsoft-edge-making-the-web-better-through-more-open-source-collaboration/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/12/06/micro...
• m1117 6y ago
  Google analytics is great. It has its issues, but overall 1. They've built a working product that is easy to connect and use 2. It fits to a lot of use cases and barely has issues 3. Easy to start using, no engineering overhead 4. I don't understand what the author trying to say. Should google be a charity? Or should they stop making good product? Or does the author want to cover the cost of all the other product that is built by google? Google is more broad. They think of all the users, not just corporations.
  • seaman1921 6y ago
    HN brain in a nutshell: big tech == evil
    • hansel_der 6y ago
      monopoly == evil
      • m1117 6y ago
        There's a lot of alternatives to google analytics that people are free to use, or build their own systems. Corps are a little evil but the consumers are also evil. Everyone is evil.
  • Nextgrid 6y ago
    I don’t think anyone is disputing the greatness of Google Analytics on a functional level. The problem is that indeed Google isn’t a charity and will not give away such a powerful tool for free without getting something in return. That return is the privilege of stalking all your website’s visitors, which are often not aware of the tracking and have no say in the matter. Furthermore it would be against the GDPR if it was actually enforced properly.
    • m1117 6y ago
      That's a great way to monetize. I have my website, it runs on GA and I'm happy to share the data instead of paying cash. I have under 1000 visits a day. I agreed on the agreement.
• alexashka 6y ago
  Ah yes, let me go live like a hunter gatherer because modern society is full of sin and evil. That's the logical conclusion of 'don't use goods and services that have 'evil' behind them'.
• arcturus17 6y ago
  Is there a paid service that's any good and easy to use? I don't buy the "don't use any analytics, period" sentiment that's being repeated in this thread, but I am currently building a project that would definitely benefit from telemetry, and I would consider a paying alternative.
  • marvinblum 6y ago
    I'm building https://pirsch.io/ https://pirsch.io/. Take a look and let me know what you think :)
• newbie578 6y ago
  I just want to know how Google's success is not good for our society? Google is successful because people find it useful, ergo it is good for society. How am I to take seriously an article like this which is purely written based on emotions with almsot 0 regards for facts? I do wonder if the author thinks that Apple is useful for society? I for one find Google way more useful to society than a glorified fashion brand.. Compared to Facebook's ads and rest of the industry, Google's are actually on point. They do not spam my screen, and most of the time are actually useful links. And the fact that they are now a huge corporation does have it's negative sides like stated in the article, but it also does have some nice benefits. Google Maps, GBoard, Gmail and to me personally the biggest play right now, Firebase, which empowers small time devs who want a quick and scalable backend with all the good offerings...
• robholmes 6y ago
  Or, try switching to a privacy focused analytics solution that values your users privacy, and provides the simple metrics that you need. Fathom Analytics: https://usefathom.com/ref/IKHKIT https://usefathom.com/ref/IKHKIT
• stevenhubertron 6y ago
  I use https://www.goatcounter.com/ https://www.goatcounter.com/ on my personal site. No where near the feature set of GA but more than enough for my needs and super lightweight.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• jamesdhutton 6y ago
  The author blames Google for the fact that recipe sites force you to wade through a long preamble before you get to the recipe. But if internet advertising didn't exist, then the recipe site would be charging him for the recipe. Recipe authors have to make a living somehow. If he doesn't want ads in his recipes, then he could always go out and buy a recipe book.
  • dazc 6y ago
    If internet advertising didn't exist then there would be only half a dozen recipes for scrambled eggs to be found, not the thousands there are now.
    • jamesdhutton 6y ago
      ... and probably not much else. I love the way I can type in whatever combination of ingredients I happen to have in my pantry, and get a bunch of free recipes with those ingredients. I doubt that would have happened without internet advertising.
      • dazc 6y ago
        Fair point
  • qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
    I also find the claim itself rather implausible and it makes me think the author just has a generic anti-tech bias. (Know what else Google is responsible for? Forwards from Grandma! And reposts on your favorite subreddit! And people ghosting you on Tinder!)
  • walshemj 6y ago
    I don't understand all this whining about recipes sites. I have never had a problem with them and I am using an 8 year old creaky laptop. And Nigellas' or the Hairybikers sites are not encumbered with adds.
  • ColFrancis 6y ago
• williesleg 6y ago
  Time to reboot the internet
• cybert00th 6y ago
  Ditched GA about two years ago now and haven't looked back. And haven't missed those upsell emails every time they released a new feature either. Instead we employ a QA to check everything from spelling and grammar, to page links and downloads and everything else in between and they've been worth every penny. Customer satisfaction and retention is up and I'm even getting better night's sleep! (I kid you not)
• sova 6y ago
  On-premise Matomo is free. https://matomo.org/matomo-on-premise/ https://matomo.org/matomo-on-premise/
  • clairity 6y ago
    note that matomo makes it very hard (impossible?) to automate updates when self-hosted, which is the reason i abandoned them on my personal projects in favor of goatcounter (for the time being until i find a simple, self-hostable option).
    • arp242 6y ago
      GoatCounter can be self-hosted; it's a first-class use case.
    • XCSme 6y ago
      You can try my platform[0], I implemented an updater system so you can update in one click to the latest version. Note: It's paid (not free). [0]: https://www.usertrack.net/ https://www.usertrack.net/
• ig1 6y ago
  The challenge is that there aren't really any good alternatives. The alternatives suggested (Plausible, Fathom, etc.) are fine for hobby projects, blogs, etc. but they don't support any of the modern analytics required for commercial usage. If you're running a business then you need an analytics solution that supports attribution modelling, cohorts, funnels, etc. and there's just no great competitors. (I'd happily invest if someone's building one!)
  • marvinblum 6y ago
    I'm the co-founder of https://pirsch.io/ https://pirsch.io/. We plan to add features for marketeers, but it's hard to be privacy-friendly/GDPR compliant and support that at the same time. We can talk about it if you like, just drop me an email: marvin.blum@emvi.com
• j_barbossa 6y ago
  I think the biggest problem about Google is not privacy. It's their way of ruining all sorts of businesses by offering services for free which only works because they cross-subsidize everything through their advertising business. Consumers are not willing to pay for navigation system anymore because Google Maps is for free. People don't hire translators because Google Translate is for free. Office suites, eMail, mobile games, storage... all free just because companies blow billions of ad money into this corporation.
• godshatter 6y ago
  Another way to not feed the beast is to use NoScript or something similar and not let google-analytics.com through.
• nexthash 6y ago
  I've come to believe that it's very difficult to operate a business relying on paid access over the Internet. Since consumers are already paying Internet providers $60 / month for this privilege, your customers will balk unless you do something different and better. This explains the non-straightforward ways Internet companies operate and why some make such absurd amounts of money. Some are very niche paid businesses like SaaS or privacy-focused mail that provide very specific and uniquely tailored services to a small set of clients. These are probably the easiest to understand, as at their core is a simple, logical transaction. However, they don't defeat companies like Google at scale due to the fact that not many people want to pay for bits that they already pay their Internet provider to deliver, and the fact that accommodating everyone's needs in such a business is overly costly. All the gargantuan scalable platforms are not really selling a technology - technology is the vehicle connecting customers to their service. Their real money maker lies outside the Internet, whether it is shipping and merchandise (Amazon), or selling an audience (Google/Facebook). I find it to be a similar scenario to McDonalds's famous franchise business model of owning the land the burger is made on, while not selling the burger itself. If you want real customer service, you need to find the local restaurant in your area and pay more (Plausible/Fathom, Hey.com, Fastmail). A common trend in response to this kind of environment has been to offer some services for free and drive users to pay more for specific use cases if they need to (especially power users and enterprises). However, doing this kind of monetization wrong can easily lobotomize your business and push users away, as seen with the ongoing news media crisis and paywalls. And it also turns out that companies used to one kind of business model find it difficult to pivot to others, for example with Google's continual failure to make paid services. In all cases, when looking at the Internet you need to examine your customers (or your needs) and focus on accessing them, even if that means tearing down any conventions you already have. This can apply to anything from the news media looking to fully digitize, or independent bloggers looking for analytics that serves them.
• chiefalchemist 6y ago
  > "Google is a giant advertising platform." That is a polite and public facing way to put it. But it's highly misleading. Google is in the behavior harvesting and archiving forever business. _One_ of the ways that intrusions manifests itself is advertising.
• PixelPaul 6y ago
  What is the best self hosted alternative that I can import google analytics data to?
• devops000 6y ago
  Google analytics is just a vanity metric, you learn a lot more with FullStory/Hotjar or with chat support (Intercom, Drift etc.)
• donohoe 6y ago
  Lets examine these "claims" a bit more closely... It’s a bloated script that affects your site speed Everything affects sites-peed. However its 19KB, thats not awful. It’s overkill for the majority of site owners Yes, agreed. But so what. It’s a privacy liability and requires an extensive privacy policy Would be nice if if it offered specifics on the "liability" but it does not. And for the weight of an "extensive privacy policy", I'm not buying this as a great reason. It worsens the user experience due to the necessity of annoying prompts. Again, what!? I'm not seeing these prompts. It’s blocked by many browsers (e.g. Firefox) so the data is not very accurate. And its blocked by ad-blockers and so much more. The point is to know what your users do. Its good to know you got 1M unique visitors last month, but I don't need to know I got 1,214,551 unique visitors. All analytic packages have problems like this. And by the way: I don't like Google Analytics, I think Plausible is a great step in the right direction, but this post is a poorly researched rant and should not be on HN.
  • notretarded 6y ago
    Nice try Google employee
  • temp8964 6y ago
    > Again, what!? I'm not seeing these prompts. Apparently it means prompts for privacy stuff.
  • hinkley 6y ago
    Google analytics code is 19k, then it still has to do all the analytics.
  • harry8 6y ago
    Come on dude, you gotta read like, the next sentence where it says these points are a summary of the details here: https://plausible.io/blog/remove-google-analytics#its-owned-by-google-the-largest-ad-tech-company-in-the-world https://plausible.io/blog/remove-google-analytics#its-owned-... eg "It uses cookies so you must obtain consent to store cookies" GDPR prompts. and "According to Google: “you must ensure that certain disclosures are given to, and consents obtained from, end users in the European Economic Area along with the UK. If you fail to comply with this policy, we may limit or suspend your use of the Google product and/or terminate your agreement”." Hyperlinking to more detail is a great thing to do when making an argument. If you're skeptical, follow the link and decide if it's really supporting evidence or you disagree. It's one way opinion writing can be vastly better in the age of hypertext than it was in the days of newsprint editorial. I'm absolutely in favour of this kind of thing! (Not a web guy, suspicious of goog, facebrick, but don't know enough to have a fully formed opinion on web analytics yet. Hyperlinked supported opinion is good.)
• dealforager 6y ago
  The funny thing is that this is essentially a giant ad for this person's business, and their website uses GA (lol). I've noticed this is an increasingly popular tactic on Reddit and HN. You clickbait people to an article backed with no data that you know will tickle people's emotions. Then at the end you include a call to action to use their service because it will save the world. I used to hate GA as well as ads in general when I had never tried to start my own business. I had the typical Reddit/HN anti-FB-and-Goog mindset. After trying to start one, I completely changed my mind. I couldn't find a reliable way to put my site in front of customers without ads. I guess if you're popular and have a huge social media reach that might be enough, but for someone with no social media presence it can be tough. Once you start spending in ads as a small business, it's useful to have some data to understand what the hell is happening to all that money. I spent thousands on FB, Google, and Reddit ads and it's extremely difficult to find out what is happening and which ones are working. How do you know which people are coming from which ad? Which ones are real people vs bots? I strongly recommend people try to make a website/app without being popular on social media and try to get people to use it without using ads. Places like Reddit are generally against self-promotion. If you Tweet/post into the ether of Twitter/FB no one is going to randomly see your post. After using ads, I've started to pay closer attention to ads instead of instantly ignoring them. It turns out that they are frequently useful. For example the other day I was searching for services for hiring a remote contractor and the ads were more relevant than the search results. As for this article, I don't really follow the logic. A lot of it seems to be backed by the knee-jerk emotional hate people have for powerful companies. For instance, when talking about how Google uses GA: > we don’t even need to speculate. It seems pretty obvious to me that they’re using it to guzzle up even more data and to crap out ever more gold ingots. Every time I see the word obvious, that is a sign that a big leap of non-obvious logic has been taken. It is not obvious that GA is being used for bad things, maybe Google just makes a ton of money because their products are useful. The rest of it also seems mostly backed by emotion. I guess these type of emotional anti-big-tech articles are quite popular here though. It seems like every day there is a new one.
  • rozab 6y ago
    To be clear, the author doesn't seem to be associated with the alternatives listed at the bottom, although they do have a single line below a divider about a wholly unrelated side project. I don't think there's a problem with posting not-very-substantive articles like this on HN - it's a forum, not just a link aggregator. They often serve as good jumping off points for discussion, especially opinions to the contrary like yours (which I am glad to have read).
• soheil 6y ago
  What's a quick straightforward alternative that supports more than a few websites without having to pay?
• aembleton 6y ago
  This ends with the author promoting his new 'bootstrapped app': https://keepthescore.co/ https://keepthescore.co/ That website uses Google Analytics!
  • dealforager 6y ago
    Well, it looks like they succeeded in their goal which was to funnel traffic to their site. It's now a top post on HN, with a top comment directly linking to their site, and I'm sure it will be shared in other places. This is partly why I'm not sure about blocking ads. I'd rather have ads be ads, and not have to read everything like it's a research paper to know if it's secretly an ad. Aside from personal blogs and forums, a lot of the internet is an ad in one way or another, although forums are also becoming more ad-y.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • VRay 6y ago
      > to know if it's secretly an ad Well, I got bad news for you, buddy, it isn't a new thing and it isn't just the internet.. http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
    • arcturus17 6y ago
      I’m pretty sure that if all the ads in the world were unblocked you’d still see inordinate amounts of SEO bullshit everywhere.
  • Debug_Overload 6y ago
    Lol. But the author is also using Fathom on that same site, not sure I understand the need for both The Beast and Fathom.
  • XCSme 6y ago
    To be honest, I also advocate pro-privacy and have built a self-hosted analytics platform, BUT I still have sites on which I have Google Ads and Google Analytics. I still have them on mostly because I don't maintain them anymore, and spending the time to fix and remove all 3rd party dependencies for a site that I don't maintain anymore is not really something I want to do. The alternative would be to completely delete the site, but it still has useful information for some people so I keep it alive.
• r_singh 6y ago
  https://www.Goatcounter.com https://www.Goatcounter.com seems like a great alternative. I’m probably gonna donate and use this for my side project and then move to their paid tier after I see a dollar.
• tanylak 6y ago
  Maybe try some other tool. Segment.io is decent.
• eli 6y ago
  The Google Analytics privacy policy forbids them from using GA data to target ads or build profiles unless you're ALSO using and linking it to AdWords.
• amatecha 6y ago
  Protip: install Pi-Hole ( https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/ ) and prevent websites you visit from feeding The Beast :)
• MadWombat 6y ago
  "It’s called surveillance capitalism and it’s certainly not about giving you a great user experience, it’s about making money" Well... it also happens to create a better (if not great) user experience along the way. I definitely prefer targeted advertisements to random ones. And I have relied on Google's ability to suggest things to me based on a complex context many times. Simple things, like giving me directions when I ask about a place, letting me see show times around me when I search for a movie, showing me the menu when I search for a restaurant etc. Do they use all the data they collect about me? Sure as hell they do. But their effort at being more accurate in their predictions also results in me having a more fluid and intuitive experience with their services. I don't like their monopolistic ambition and I don't like the way they have treated their customers and clients on many occasions. But there is no comparable user experience to switch to and I am not even sure such experience can be created without having another Google.
• zelon88 6y ago
  I don't disagree with this post, but why bother? You have to go further than that. If you don't go all the way you might as well not even bother. Even the blog hosting this article uses Google Fonts. So what, you didn't give Google Analytics your users info. SURPRISE! You actually did anyway. You didn't keep Google from getting your users info. You just sandbagged your own analytics. Sidebar: I used to use https://wp-statistics.com/ https://wp-statistics.com/ because it is a self-hosted analytic plugin for WordPress.
• jart 6y ago
  I've never understood how people can muster such hatred for a company that makes all the most outstanding technology products and then gives them away for free. The mental backflips that must take.
  • teeray 6y ago
    I think it’s because that they know it’s not free. It’s a subscription service paid for in information supplied by users. For some, this is an acceptable trade. Others would like to pay for services in dollars instead, but that’s not an option in many cases.
    • jart 6y ago
      Do you believe that paid services don't collect data? It's impossible to not collect data for web services. These days even local applications you need to pay money for, like Photoshop, collect tons of information, and we don't have a clear picture of why exactly they need it. With Google we know that they don't sell our data and that the only thing they care about is being able to use the data to show better ads. They also give us the freedom to use an ad blocker if we choose, so what's not to love?
      • mrmonkeyman 6y ago
        You are so competent and so clever, but you still say these things. Boggles the mind. Specialisation at work I guess.
      • matheusmoreira 6y ago
        We know for a fact that USA intelligence agencies have warrantless access to Google data though. When it comes to these organizations, it'd be preferrable if no data was ever collected in the first place. The information should not actually exist in any database of any company. This is the oonly way I can imagine being somewhat safe from their global espionage.
• hunter-2 6y ago
  I really miss Sitemeter - loved their simple, no nonsense metrics that was exactly what I wanted from an analytics tool. I don't even understand the new version of GA, and have no idea why I still have it on my site. But again, I don't want to pay for analytics. It's not a core necessity for my sites. Are there Sitemeter-like simple ads-monetized sites still? I don't like Mixpanel and the other big ones.
• gerash 6y ago
  It is great to have alternatives to successful products and services that big companies provide. Esp. if the pitch is why this alternatives is better not why the incumbent is evil. But the amount of negative campaigning (remember Scroogled campaign?) and BS that goes with it here makes me cringe each time I see one of these posts.
• atomicson 6y ago
  In the end this guy endorse another little 'godzilla'.
• mikesabbagh 6y ago
  I use analytics to check on the keywords, and number of users per different countries. Their UI is hard to use. what other solution is there?
• gorgoiler 6y ago
  Quite the provocative intro. Does Google make money to make the world a better place, or does Google make the world a better place in order to make loadsa money? By what evidence do we distinguish the two? Is Google majority controlled by its idealist founders still, or is it a money spinning machine for the pension funds which own it?
• LindaGsd97 6y ago
  Awesоme сhicks aге waiting fог you hеre! ---- https://news.ycombinator.com@oo.lc/kERN2 https://news.ycombinator.com@oo.lc/kERN2
• EGreg 6y ago
  Just another example using a Big Tech product as a third party closed source solution, instead of installing your own (Piwik maybe?) that can run on your own server, and not track your users across sites. It's your own analytics, of your own site, seriously people.
• pikseladam 6y ago
  Are alternatives free? no
• kureikain 6y ago
  If one want to self-hosted, consider using https://ackee.electerious.com/ https://ackee.electerious.com/ it looks very slick.
• blacklight 6y ago
  Firefox+NoScript+PiHole user here. Once the pages on your browser start rendering at twice the speed they normally render on other people's devices because you block all the analytics and ads crap, you never look back. And even though I don't use any analytics on my websites (heck, some of them don't even run a line of JS), I still get plenty of valuable (and privacy-aware) insights about user experience. Web server logs are a source of user activity that has been almost forgotten. You can infer a lot of information (from what page a user came, to which page they navigated next etc.) from the logs alone. All you have is the IP address of a browser, which might as well be spoofed/proxied, but do you really need anything else than an ephemeral and loose user identifier if your goal is just to make sure that users spend time on your website? Why would we delegate such a simple task to a company that pollutes and slows down our web pages with their bloated analytics and isn't transparent with us about what they do with that data?
  • shenberg 6y ago
    Bots. Spam ruins it for everyone. Cloudflare, for example, provide an analytics platform based off of logs, but it overreports visits by a huge amount for most cases because javascript is a good filter for most bots. Here's Cloudflare's page on why there is a discrepancy between their numbers and GA-type services: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037684111-Why-do-my-Cloudflare-traffic-numbers-look-different-than-other-services-Google-Compete-as-well-as-my-own-log-files- https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/36003768411... And here's a blog post by a self-hosted-analytics provider who shows exact numbers from his personal blog: https://markosaric.com/cloudflare-analytics-review/ https://markosaric.com/cloudflare-analytics-review/ He has a stake in the matter, but it's also such a huge discrepancy that I'm guessing is hard to fake. Anecdotally, friends I have with small blogs mirror this experience.
    • blacklight 6y ago
      Bot activities in web server logs isn't that hard to spot. They often don't use "regular" user agents, they usually only download a page's HTML without getting all the images and media, they often do a GET on /robots.txt before proceeding, they manifest unrealisticly short times between browsing a page and going to the next one, and they often come from known IP subnets. My simple log parsing heuristic can already remove 90% of the bot traffic from the statistics.
• thinkindie 6y ago
  While others have already pointed out that the author is also using Google Analytics with the other website that is promoting at the end of the post, I would like to point out that the same website is also using google fonts which, as much as i love it and i use it, it fits into the same category of a free google analytics.
• cryptica 6y ago
  Advertising was never as lucrative as it is today and big data is not as useful as the corporate narrative wants us to think. What's really going on behind the scenes is massive scale credit laundering of newly printed fiat money. That's the real cash cow for these megacorps.
• blacklion 6y ago
  I wonder, is it I'm so unlucky or what? All these articles about surveillance capitalism promises me very precise targeted ads (quote from this article: "Google uses its extensive knowledge of you to show you advertising that fits you like a tailor-made suit."). But I didn't get that at all. All I get is generic advertisements, often for services or goods which are not available in my region (!). Examples: (1) I've made my first Instagram post when I've been traveling in Myanmar. I had account for several months already, and I was subscribed for my friends & family and several thematic accounts, but my first post was some travel photo from Myanmar. After that year and a half (!!!) I was feed only by Myanmar ads in Instagram. I was in Myanmar for a 3 weeks, but still! Yes, it is not Google, it is FB. (2) I'm seeing only two types of ads on Youtube: generic ads of food delivery services in my country (I never use them) and a lot of ads for UK bank and cell services. And also UK Amazon and UK Youtube Premium ads (with prices in pounds). Yes, I have IPv6 tunnel to UK, it is right. But I don't think that IP-based ads is "Google knows anything about me". Banners are not better: generic AliExpress and some strange mixed offers which looks like same AliExpressdrop-shipping at best and scam at worst. Google (and FB) could know, that I like DIY, electronics and motorcycles. I can not hide that. But I don't see ANY relevant ads on ANY global platform. Where are there "tailored ads"? Did you see them? Country-local advertisement network shows me goods which I searched for on local marketplace (after I bought one, of course), it is somewhat relevant (but, again, mostly useless), but global Ads giants who "knows everything about me" shows only generic or complete irrelevant crap. I'm using GMail a lot, my primary search engine is Google, I have huge youtube subscription list (so, my interests must be obvious), but no, not a single piece of relevant ad from Google or FB.
• bearbawl 6y ago
  I’m not really a pro Google analytics, mainly because it is a performance mess, you can’t load it async, even their own PageSpeed insight doesn’t like it, etc. (except if they corrected this), but to say that absolutely everything they do is in order to make more ad revenue feels like a very narrow view. Google is not an ad company only, right? I don’t want to go on each item this company is doing, I’m sure there are a ton lot but they made $13 billions on the Cloud division alone last year. This is a super young service and it will explode in the next decades. They are also selling a ton lot of smartphones and I’m pretty sure they don’t do that at loss only to get some more ad revenues? Even YouTube, which is definitely a platform to run ad at first, will surely generate a ton of pure non-ad profit when millions of people will get YouTube premium. More generally, is it just me or this kind of anti big Corp speech is becoming more and more boring? Or maybe it’s because I’m too old and I want to defend the little search engine that has transformed into a monster?