Tags: Internet Privacy
Google says it is worth $1000 for you to use Google Analytics, the free service for tracking website traffic, on your website. As they say, if the online service is free, then you are the product.
For years I used Google Analytics on the websites I publish. As a sole proprietor one-man-band, I needed all the free help I can get to understand the traffic coming to my website, traffic sources, traffic trends, and so forth. Google Analytics was an excellent (free) tool for all those purposes and more.
I'm not alone in using Google Analytics. It seems to be an extremely popular service. Its comprehensive feature-set makes it by far the most powerful tool I've used for tracking and understanding website traffic.
Installing Analytics on a website was very simple. In the Analytics dashboard, create a section for each website of interest, do a little configuration, and Analytics gives you an HTML snippet. Make sure that snippet loads on every page view, and that's it. The JavaScript running in that snippet reports data to Google from which Analytics generates all those charts and tables.
There's a reason I'm using past tense to refer to Analytics. Earlier this year I removed it from every one of my websites.
And, now, Google is dangling an offer of $1000 in free Google Ads advertising services if only I reinstate Google Analytics on those sites. The image above shows the lead in the offer, and it goes on to explain the advantages of using Google Ads.
I'm turning this offer down for the same reason I stripped Analytics out of my sites in the first place.
Namely, I grew increasingly uncomfortable that my websites sent personal information about visitors to Google.
It's widely reported that Google (and Facebook/Twitter/Microsoft/etc) uses every avenue it can develop to collect virtual dossiers on all of use who use Google services. With most Google services it's obvious you're using a Google service. Whether it's YouTube, Search, Workspace, or News, it's obvious you're on a Google-owned website. Analytics is different in that its data collection is transparent. The JavaScript snippet runs, does not show any visual indicator, and sends data to Google Analytics servers.
The Analytics service is an example of the breathtaking scope of information Google collects.
I an certain that data collected by Google Analytics does not stay within the confines of Analytics servers. Instead, I am certain that this data is correlated with other data and stashed into those virtual dossiers. The primary use is obviously to feed the highly detailed demographic targeting available in Google Ads. But, what other purpose(s) does have Google for collecting all that data?
As they say, if the online service is free then you are the product. In the case of Google Analytics, however, it is data about your visitors that is the product. In effect, unknowingly to website visitors, Google uses Analytics to grab tremendous amounts of data about the visitors to our websites.
Over the last few years the questions above nagged away at the back of my mind. My websites are one of zillions of channels through which Google is collecting personal data. I willingly, by installing the Analytics HTML snippet, allowed Google to transparently collect data about the visitors to my sites.
In other words, I'm personally responsible for feeding personal data about visitors to my sites to Google. The same is true for every other website owner who uses Google Analytics. For that matter, any 3rd party site which asks you to install an HTML snippet which runs JavaScript is possibly running the same data collection scheme.
I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with being in that role. I'm working on deGoogling my life, to limit the personal data Google collects about me. It would be hypocritical to be helping Google collect data about my website visitors.
That's why I removed Google Analytics from my sites. As a website owner, I can do my little bit to lessen the firehose of personal information Google is swallowing every day.
On the downside, I no longer have data about my visitors, do not know how they're arriving on my site, what keywords are used to reach my site, and so forth. I had relied on Google for that information, and I've not had time to find an alternative service. I know of several open source website analytics packages. My preference is to use self-hosted open source solutions because that is theoretically the cleanest approach. But, I haven't even had time to evaluate any of the options.
