As someone who still uses GA for multiple sites, can we actually discuss the claims of the article and not the broad idea of it?
> " > These two tracking scripts combined add 45.7 KB of page weight to each and every page load."
Google makes fantastic products that are available for free (with limits) because they make most of their money from ads. I may not like it, but gmail, Drive, YouTube are all great and I would prefer people who can't pay for such products have the free option.
> "It’s a bloated script that affects your site speed"
As others have said, no? Not with caching? Anyway my websites are probably bloated by all sorts of bigger things, I am no web dev and have had no time to optimize them overmuch, and the still work fine. So guilt tripping me about GA Analytics aint gonna work.
> "It’s overkill for the majority of site owners"
I like having the flexibility ; I seriously doubt this is a good pitch for any growing company or even project.
> "It’s a liability considering GDPR, CCPA and other privacy regulations"
Is it? It's not like Google is not addressing GDPR concerns (https://www.cookiebot.com/en/google-analytics-gdpr/)
> "It uses cookies so you must obtain consent to store cookies"
Okay, finally a good one -- nobody likes the cookie popup, so removing GA analytics would improve user experience. Then again, it's so common that people maybe are used to it?
> "It’s blocked by many plugins and browsers so the data is not very accurate"
'There’s no definite answer on how many people block Google Analytics as that depends on the audience of your site, but for a tech audience, you shouldn’t be surprised to see 50% or more of the visitors blocking Google Analytics.' Really? I kind of doubt it..........
> "It requires an extensive privacy policy"
Any analytics should have privacy disclosure, presumably.
> "It’s abused by referral spam that skews the data"
And other analytics aren't?
> "It’s a proprietary product so you need to put your trust in Google"
Fair, Open Source is preferable.
> "It worsens the user experience due to the necessity for the annoying prompts"
A repeat
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So yeah. Look, I am uncomfortable with big huge giant companies like Google ruling the earth. But I also have quite limited time and money, and already use gmail and Drive. So far Google has not done anything to seriously hurt my trust and I think their products are excellent. Most of these points seem weak to me, as someone already using GA analytics.
Still, for someone building a new website, I could see this being enough to make the point. But, I think it would be far more effective if it was more concise and less easy to point out holes in the arguments.