>, we relied on webserver logs and local database entries. [...] How many websites could suffice with such analytics today, I wonder? Has Google Analytics, and

>, we relied on webserver logs and local database entries. [...] How many websites could suffice with such analytics today, I wonder? Has Google Analytics, and the likes, sold us on learned helplessness to [...] to power their advertising? No, it's not just serving Google's own interests for advertising. The GoogleAnalytics tags & tracking is also serving the desires of the content creators and authors. Think of it as 2 different levels of data: (1) server connections data -- vs -- (2) demographics data (1) Local server logs of anonymous users will have data like ip addresses and web browser user agent strings. One can use this for monitoring bandwidth, analyzing DDOS attacks, decide on Cloudflare, etc. It's "sysadmin" type of data vs "marketing" data. Yes, one can do some limited demographic info such as ip geolocation cross referencing and/or "mobile-vs-desktop-ratio" from user-agent strings but server logs don't have rich enough data to satisfy content creators. (2) GoogleAnalytics has higher-level data such as demographics[1]. Content creators like to get extra insights into "who their audience is". Male-vs-female ratios, young/old, etc That's why a so-called "simple" minimalist website such as https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ ... that lectures readers on avoiding useless tech ... still has the author motivated to embed GoogleAnalytics into it. (Ctrl+U View Source to see GA script tag at the bottom.) Can't web authors just blog without giving a care about fine-grained audience demographics?!? Sure they can. But many of them don't. To them, getting insights into their audience helps them shape the next article or adjust their content, etc. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=google+analyltics+demographics+data https://www.google.com/search?q=google+analyltics+demographi...