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What will happen to the European internet now? Pretty much every website in Europe uses Google Analytics. Next round Google Adsense? What will the European fr

by TekMol 5y ago

What will happen to the European internet now? Pretty much every website in Europe uses Google Analytics. Next round Google Adsense? What will the European free web look like if it cannot be monetized anymore? Also, isn't the article somewhat strange? It is about a ruling but does not link to it or even gives any clue how they found it and how the reader can find it?

david_draco 5y ago
Why do you consider Google Adsense&Analytics the only possibility for monitization?
- TekMol 5y ago
  When we look at publishers who publish in English for the whole world, the situation is like this: Adsense pays low and has ok protection from malicious ads. All other players I know pay even lower and feature more aggressive/malicious ads. While also being in the USA and having even more questionable data handling. If the European free and English internet turns of adsense right now, many of these publishers are bankrupt in that very moment.
  - nicbou 5y ago
    Ads are less and less common for monetisation. Most websites have switched to some form of affiliate marketing.
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      Citation needed i think, especially for european sites.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Bayart 5y ago
I don't see how a web that depends on advertising and the whims of foreign megacorps is « free ». If anything it leads to lower standards of free speech and discourse.
- rat9988 5y ago
  Free money wise
denton-scratch 5y ago
> What will the European free web look like if it cannot be monetized anymore? What's analytics got to do with monetization?
nevernothing 5y ago
this is the blog post from noyb (the organisation who made the complaint): https://noyb.eu/de/oesterr-dsb-eu-us-datenuebermittlung-google-analytics-illegal https://noyb.eu/de/oesterr-dsb-eu-us-datenuebermittlung-goog... pdf in english: https://noyb.eu/sites/default/files/2022-01/E-DSB%20-%20Google%20Analytics_EN_bk.pdf https://noyb.eu/sites/default/files/2022-01/E-DSB%20-%20Goog...
- reilly3000 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing. I feel this is the most relevant part: > As a processor, the second respondent provided the website operator with numerous configuration options for Google Analytics. On the basis of the information received, it should be noted that the Respondent configured Google Analytics as stated. Due to a possible configuration error, the respondent did not activate the IP anonymization function in all cases. Under normal operating conditions and to the extent that users based in the EU are affected, a web server is located in the EEA, which is why IP anonymization is generally carried out within the EEA. In the present case, normal operating conditions were present.
reilly3000 5y ago
1. There are plenty of privacy-focused and self-hosted web analytics packages. Their adoption is widespread in EU online publishers and is growing in the US. 2. This has to do with specific implementation of Google Analytics, wherein psuedo-PII is collected without appropriate disclosure and consent, and may be considered sale of data if the option to pass data to other Google services is selected. A vanilla installation of GA without opting into information sharing or passing custom parameters generally is GDPR compliant and falls under the Measurement (Purpose 4) category of cookie consent. 3. The European internet for publishers is noisy with consent banners, but continues to monetize and thrive. Advertisers haven't pulled out en masse and audiences still consume content. Ad targeting is harder, but the old ways of matching ads to content remain viable, along with other techniques.
ls15 5y ago
> Next round Google Adsense? What will the European free web look like if it cannot be monetized anymore? Aren't websites still allowed to advertise?
r_hoods_ghost 5y ago
"What will the European free web look like if it cannot be monetized anymore?" Given that, subjectively at least, most sites that I end up on which are "monetized" through ads are valueless content farms, I see the eventual banning of Gooogle AdSense within Europe(and taboola, out brain and all the others) as a wholly good thing! More seriously, very little of what Google Analytics does is particularly novel or hard to replicate via another service, it's just used by default everywhere because that's what devs are familiar with. Ripping it out and replacing it with another product that gives you almost all the same functionality but which doesn't put you in breach of law is probably not that difficult most of the time. Doing that AND moving off AWS AND every other USA owned service where you store customer data.. now that's a different story
- marstall 5y ago
  amen.
alkonaut 5y ago
> What will the European free web look like if it cannot be monetized anymore? Maybe a large chunk of sites will disappear. But if the only way they were sustainable were through tracking ads and effectively trading in peoples personal information then that’s for the better. Everyone understands what privacy laws mean for adtech. The sites that use adtech for funding aren’t an unfortunate casualty in this, they are targets.
marstall 5y ago
there are many, many other analytics providers. I personally like plausible.io - and they happen to be GDPR-compliant and EU based. Which is not even the reason I chose them - they are just superior in many ways to GA. (no affiliation)
usrusr 5y ago
Worst case: monetized in the non-free way. Which might eventually turn out to be the best case. Less dramatical outcome: roughly the same amount of advertising, roughly the same amount of ad spend/income, just not quite as targeted as it is now. Maybe you are too young to remember, but there used to be a web where not every website showed exactly the same ads to a given user. Ads where targeted more by context/content of the site than by browser history. That era made a certain company very rich that happened to be quite good at inferring context/content of websites using crawler technology. Most likely outcome: not really any noticeable change, ad mediators will find a subset of tracking data that is sufficient to keep up their current level of targeting creepiness that isn't in judicable contradiction with the GDPR.
belter 5y ago
Are you arguing that if Europe stops using Google Analytics that is a bad thing?

by TekMol 5y ago

david_draco 5y ago

Why do you consider Google Adsense&Analytics the only possibility for monitization?

TekMol 5y ago
When we look at publishers who publish in English for the whole world, the situation is like this: Adsense pays low and has ok protection from malicious ads. All other players I know pay even lower and feature more aggressive/malicious ads. While also being in the USA and having even more questionable data handling. If the European free and English internet turns of adsense right now, many of these publishers are bankrupt in that very moment.
- nicbou 5y ago
  Ads are less and less common for monetisation. Most websites have switched to some form of affiliate marketing.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    Citation needed i think, especially for european sites.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Bayart 5y ago

I don't see how a web that depends on advertising and the whims of foreign megacorps is « free ». If anything it leads to lower standards of free speech and discourse.

rat9988 5y ago
Free money wise

denton-scratch 5y ago

> What will the European free web look like if it cannot be monetized anymore? What's analytics got to do with monetization?

nevernothing 5y ago

this is the blog post from noyb (the organisation who made the complaint): https://noyb.eu/de/oesterr-dsb-eu-us-datenuebermittlung-google-analytics-illegal https://noyb.eu/de/oesterr-dsb-eu-us-datenuebermittlung-goog... pdf in english: https://noyb.eu/sites/default/files/2022-01/E-DSB%20-%20Google%20Analytics_EN_bk.pdf https://noyb.eu/sites/default/files/2022-01/E-DSB%20-%20Goog...

reilly3000 5y ago
Thank you for sharing. I feel this is the most relevant part: > As a processor, the second respondent provided the website operator with numerous configuration options for Google Analytics. On the basis of the information received, it should be noted that the Respondent configured Google Analytics as stated. Due to a possible configuration error, the respondent did not activate the IP anonymization function in all cases. Under normal operating conditions and to the extent that users based in the EU are affected, a web server is located in the EEA, which is why IP anonymization is generally carried out within the EEA. In the present case, normal operating conditions were present.

reilly3000 5y ago

1. There are plenty of privacy-focused and self-hosted web analytics packages. Their adoption is widespread in EU online publishers and is growing in the US. 2. This has to do with specific implementation of Google Analytics, wherein psuedo-PII is collected without appropriate disclosure and consent, and may be considered sale of data if the option to pass data to other Google services is selected. A vanilla installation of GA without opting into information sharing or passing custom parameters generally is GDPR compliant and falls under the Measurement (Purpose 4) category of cookie consent. 3. The European internet for publishers is noisy with consent banners, but continues to monetize and thrive. Advertisers haven't pulled out en masse and audiences still consume content. Ad targeting is harder, but the old ways of matching ads to content remain viable, along with other techniques.

ls15 5y ago

> Next round Google Adsense? What will the European free web look like if it cannot be monetized anymore? Aren't websites still allowed to advertise?

r_hoods_ghost 5y ago

"What will the European free web look like if it cannot be monetized anymore?" Given that, subjectively at least, most sites that I end up on which are "monetized" through ads are valueless content farms, I see the eventual banning of Gooogle AdSense within Europe(and taboola, out brain and all the others) as a wholly good thing! More seriously, very little of what Google Analytics does is particularly novel or hard to replicate via another service, it's just used by default everywhere because that's what devs are familiar with. Ripping it out and replacing it with another product that gives you almost all the same functionality but which doesn't put you in breach of law is probably not that difficult most of the time. Doing that AND moving off AWS AND every other USA owned service where you store customer data.. now that's a different story

marstall 5y ago
amen.

alkonaut 5y ago

> What will the European free web look like if it cannot be monetized anymore? Maybe a large chunk of sites will disappear. But if the only way they were sustainable were through tracking ads and effectively trading in peoples personal information then that’s for the better. Everyone understands what privacy laws mean for adtech. The sites that use adtech for funding aren’t an unfortunate casualty in this, they are targets.

marstall 5y ago

there are many, many other analytics providers. I personally like plausible.io - and they happen to be GDPR-compliant and EU based. Which is not even the reason I chose them - they are just superior in many ways to GA. (no affiliation)

usrusr 5y ago

Worst case: monetized in the non-free way. Which might eventually turn out to be the best case. Less dramatical outcome: roughly the same amount of advertising, roughly the same amount of ad spend/income, just not quite as targeted as it is now. Maybe you are too young to remember, but there used to be a web where not every website showed exactly the same ads to a given user. Ads where targeted more by context/content of the site than by browser history. That era made a certain company very rich that happened to be quite good at inferring context/content of websites using crawler technology. Most likely outcome: not really any noticeable change, ad mediators will find a subset of tracking data that is sufficient to keep up their current level of targeting creepiness that isn't in judicable contradiction with the GDPR.

belter 5y ago

Are you arguing that if Europe stops using Google Analytics that is a bad thing?