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Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

fortune.com

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Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#2

Post by eberkund »

Awesome, it's good to see more options in the backend/no-JS analytics space. Netlify has a product but it is of course limited to Netlify-hosted static sites. Cloudflare Analytics appears to be a lot more flexible since you only need to be using them for DNS in order for it to work.

Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#3

Post by brightball »

I recently started migrating a chunk of my personal domains to Cloudflare's registrar service, just to ensure that my renewal costs were being minimized and check out some of their other offerings.

I always thought of Cloudflare as mostly a WAF/CDN/DNS option but I was really shocked to see all of the available functionality that they provide. They already had some analytics available before this announcement. The option for workers as an edge computing option is great to know about as well. CNAME flattening is a really handy DNS feature too. I'm going to eventually migrate everything, but the built in email proxy that I've had with Namecheap to this point means that I've got to go setup a replacement for each domain.

But I didn't realize that they'd even created a remote friendly business networking service. Cloudflare Access and Cloudflare Gateway specifically. I'm a little shocked that I haven't seen more news about these two options because it seems like their usage would be skyrocketing right now.

Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#4

Post by dudus »

I can't keep from thinking this is a misguided step. If they are going after the google analytics market of non paying users maybe they are able to lure some, but remember that these are non paying users so they are not likely to bring much revenue anyway, google can justify because it sells the value of their ad business. On the other hand there's an enterprise market they just can't compete with, a market Google is #2 and Adobe is #1.

So they are spending a lot of valuable eng cycles and a ton of computing resources to go after a very narrow and low revenue market.

Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#5

Post by leorio »

dudus wrote: post #4

I can't keep from thinking this is a misguided step. If they are going after the google analytics market of non paying users maybe they are able to lure some, but remember that these are non paying users so they are not likely to bring much revenue anyway, google can justify because it sells the value of their ad business. On the other hand there's an enterprise market they just can't compete with, a market Google is…

You are downplaying the role of bundling effects especially for a company like Cloudflare.

Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#6

Post by dylan604 »

dudus wrote: post #4

I can't keep from thinking this is a misguided step. If they are going after the google analytics market of non paying users maybe they are able to lure some, but remember that these are non paying users so they are not likely to bring much revenue anyway, google can justify because it sells the value of their ad business. On the other hand there's an enterprise market they just can't compete with, a market Google is…

Cloudflare is a business, and businesses exist to make money. So anything they do ultimately has an ulterior motive of getting more business. Even if it is a loss leader type of service.

However, could it possibly be that there is a company that has decided that they could give back to the community they make money from to push back against the hoovering of all data just because? I currently use no Cloudflare service(s), but small things like this get my attention.

Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#7

Post by seldonnn »

dudus wrote: post #4

I can't keep from thinking this is a misguided step. If they are going after the google analytics market of non paying users maybe they are able to lure some, but remember that these are non paying users so they are not likely to bring much revenue anyway, google can justify because it sells the value of their ad business. On the other hand there's an enterprise market they just can't compete with, a market Google is…

it help fill the customer acquisition funnel, which drives revenue for other products. The product is effectively marketing expense.

Re: Cloudflare’s privacy crusade continues with a challenge to Google Analytics

#10

Post by judge2020 »

STRiDEX wrote: post #9

cloudflare's blog post - https://blog.cloudflare.com/free-privacy-first-analytics-for... landing page - https://www.cloudflare.com/web-analytics/

and HN thread on the blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627204
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