For the HN audience you probably could, since we're all on modern browsers. The pattern above is what GA uses to guarantee most consistent behavior across all b

For the HN audience you probably could, since we're all on modern browsers. The pattern above is what GA uses to guarantee most consistent behavior across all browsers. It comes down to browser support for the async keyword: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1834077/which-browsers-support-script-async-async/6766189#6766189 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1834077/which-browsers-su... As far as async vs. defer, here's a good summary: http://www.sitepoint.com/non-blocking-async-defer/ http://www.sitepoint.com/non-blocking-async-defer/