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We ditched Google Analytics

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Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#221

Post by yoo1I »

eponeponepon wrote: post #29

It took us only a few weeks to write our home-brew analytics package. Nothing super fancy yet now we have an internal dashboard that shows the entire company much of what we used analytics for anyway - and with some nice integration with some of our other systems too. I never quite grasp how the above isn't just a matter of intuition to anyone working in the tech sector. Google Analytics thrives on developers' lazine…

A lot of people are replying to the suggestion of implementing your own analytics by calling out it's NIHness.

I've recently been faced with this problem, and a solution doesn't have to be too complex.

There are roughly two parts to an analytics solution: event logging and, well, the actual analytics.

Writing your own logger in javascript is super simple, you're just sending off json objects to be inserted into a elasticsearch cluster. Since you have to define that logging anyhow, the only extra work you need to do is the layer to do the actual ajaxrequests.

What's left is running and defining your queries in elasticsearch.

BAM! Analytics

I realize it's not fit to be used for every situation, but it can so some pretty complex things this way without the hugest amount of effort ...

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#222

Post by ubersync »

eponeponepon wrote: post #29

It took us only a few weeks to write our home-brew analytics package. Nothing super fancy yet now we have an internal dashboard that shows the entire company much of what we used analytics for anyway - and with some nice integration with some of our other systems too. I never quite grasp how the above isn't just a matter of intuition to anyone working in the tech sector. Google Analytics thrives on developers' lazine…

Don't the ad blockers disable Google Analytics by default? If I am not wrong, I think uBlock Origin does.

So, I think, as more and more people will start using ad blockers, site owners will start getting less and less accurate stats from Google Analytics, forcing them to implement their own solutions. Hopefully, open source solutions will start providing the best features that Google does.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#223

Post by dschep »

gramakri wrote: post #72

At Cloudron, our vision is to allow companies to host their own apps easily. We dogfood and don't use Google. We don't use analytics on our website (a conscious decision). Our emails are based on IMAP servers and we use thunderbird. We selfhost everything other than email (which is on gandi). We just entered private beta yesterday - https://cloudron.io/blog/2015-12-07-private-beta.html

How's this compare to Sandstorm[0]? It seems like a Closed/SaaS equivalent.

[0] https://sandstorm.io/

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#224

Post by gedrap »

yoo1I wrote: post #221
eponeponepon wrote: post #29

It took us only a few weeks to write our home-brew analytics package. Nothing super fancy yet now we have an internal dashboard that shows the entire company much of what we used analytics for anyway - and with some nice integration with some of our other systems too. I never quite grasp how the above isn't just a matter of intuition to anyone working in the tech sector. Google Analytics thrives on developers' lazine…

A lot of people are replying to the suggestion of implementing your own analytics by calling out it's NIHness. I've recently been faced with this problem, and a solution doesn't have to be too complex. There are roughly two parts to an analytics solution: event logging and, well, the actual analytics. Writing your own logger in javascript is super simple, you're just sending off json objects to be inserted into a ela…

I get what you are trying to say and I was one of the NIH-sayers, it totally makes sense in some cases and looks like it made sense in your case. Great! :)

I don't think anyone was saying that GA is always better, it's just more often than not it is. It takes some skill and quite a bit of experience to draw the line at a reasonable place and correctly recognize the trade offs.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#225

Post by adrianlmm »

cpncrunch wrote: post #151

>why does Google and their advertisers need to know about it I would ask Google is pretty clear about this. The only reason they track you is for advertising, and there isn't any evidence of them using the info for anything else. In fact there is a lot of evidence pointing the other way, such as their insistence on encryption data flowing between their datacenters. This is Google we are talking about, not Kazakhstan,…

Still, Google is a corporation whos only porpose is proffit, trust them blindly is foolish.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#226

Post by cpncrunch »

adrianlmm wrote: post #225
cpncrunch wrote: post #151

>why does Google and their advertisers need to know about it I would ask Google is pretty clear about this. The only reason they track you is for advertising, and there isn't any evidence of them using the info for anything else. In fact there is a lot of evidence pointing the other way, such as their insistence on encryption data flowing between their datacenters. This is Google we are talking about, not Kazakhstan,…

Still, Google is a corporation whos only porpose is proffit, trust them blindly is foolish.

Their other purpose is "dont be evil". There may be some debate about that at times, but they certainly aren't going to screw their customers. They know that their customer base would evaporate pretty quickly if they tried to screw them.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#227

Post by stanleydrew »

_lce0 wrote: post #23

Kudos for this!! it's interesting that still there's meta, probably leftover EDIT: wow, thanks for your answers guys!! so nice to see Cunningham's law in action ;)

Surprised that they don't use the DNS verification option. Bloating your HTML for every request is unnecessary.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#228

Post by cpncrunch »

Paul-ish wrote: post #219
cpncrunch wrote: post #151

>why does Google and their advertisers need to know about it I would ask Google is pretty clear about this. The only reason they track you is for advertising, and there isn't any evidence of them using the info for anything else. In fact there is a lot of evidence pointing the other way, such as their insistence on encryption data flowing between their datacenters. This is Google we are talking about, not Kazakhstan,…

Google could eventually use this information to determine your eligibility for a home loan. They have already dipped their toes in this area [1]. With all this data, we have to ensure that it is used fairly (or not at all). There is enough concern about digital redlining that a 2014 report to the white house reports on this [2]. As we know machine learning is quite capable inferring sensitive attributes [3]. This inf…

Lots of speculation about what they might do. You could also say that the US government could use all of your data to spy on people who criticise the government, so they shouldn't have any of that data either.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#229

Post by adrianlmm »

cpncrunch wrote: post #226
adrianlmm wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, Google is a corporation whos only porpose is proffit, trust them blindly is foolish.

Their other purpose is "dont be evil". There may be some debate about that at times, but they certainly aren't going to screw their customers. They know that their customer base would evaporate pretty quickly if they tried to screw them.

> Their other purpose is "dont be evil".

I feel so tempted to laught at your face right now.

>screw their customers

Google's customers are advertizers, not common people.

Re: We ditched Google Analytics

#230

Post by tootie »

eponeponepon wrote: post #29

It took us only a few weeks to write our home-brew analytics package. Nothing super fancy yet now we have an internal dashboard that shows the entire company much of what we used analytics for anyway - and with some nice integration with some of our other systems too. I never quite grasp how the above isn't just a matter of intuition to anyone working in the tech sector. Google Analytics thrives on developers' lazine…

    much of what we used analytics for anyway
Until your requirements grow and your stuck building something that was in GA 5 years ago.
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