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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

#51

Post by Xamayon »

This is very interesting, if it's not arbitrarily limited hit/etc wise it could be a great solution to some of my problems.

One of my sites has been flirting with the Google Analytics data limits, and all the options I have looked into for addressing that or moving off GA seem like they would reduce usefulness dramatically, take lots of work, lots of money, or lots of extra hardware.

From a quick look, I don't see any limits mentioned for this, so if it's just the typical incredibly high CF limits, it would be very welcome news.

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

#52

Post by DoctorOW »

manigandham wrote: post #45
redm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They still have the best performing and most feature-ful CDN available." I don't think thats true. Do you have an actual reference for this? I've used CLoudFlare heavily, along with Akamai, Fastly, Verizon, Bunny, etc. I would say CloudFlare is the most approachable CDN with a wide set of easily accessible features. Its free tier is terrific too. I would argue that feature for feature, CDN's like Akamai have a much…

Cloudflare is more than just a CDN unlike Fastly and Bunny. Verizon and Akamai are clearly enterprise focused with long feature lists but they still don't match the same useful and modern features like Workers.

The place where Cloudflare truly doesn't have competition is in the non-enterprise space. If you're worried about your blog or SMB website getting overloaded or attacked you'd probably be pretty tempted to switch to Cloudflare's free plan. I can't imagine Akamai or Verizon even bothering themselves with a customer that small.

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

#54

Post by manigandham »

DoctorOW wrote: post #52
manigandham wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare is more than just a CDN unlike Fastly and Bunny. Verizon and Akamai are clearly enterprise focused with long feature lists but they still don't match the same useful and modern features like Workers.

The place where Cloudflare truly doesn't have competition is in the non-enterprise space. If you're worried about your blog or SMB website getting overloaded or attacked you'd probably be pretty tempted to switch to Cloudflare's free plan. I can't imagine Akamai or Verizon even bothering themselves with a customer that small.

And many of those small customers have turned into large customers. Clearly their success shows that it's a big market so it's even more strange that there's such a lack of competition.

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

#55

Post by finnthehuman »

nateberkopec wrote: post #27
SamWhited wrote: post #20

I don't want to diminish the good things Cloudflare has done for privacy on the web, and I welcome alternatives to Google Analytics, but Cloudflare's mission is to get the entire web behind them and give them complete control over all their TLS certificates, traffic, and now analytics. They may be okay right now, but there is absolutely nothing stopping the next CEO, or some future board or big investor group from ch…

People have said this for years, and yet there still isn't a viable competitor to Cloudflare. They still have the best performing and most feature-ful CDN available. The competition is not even that close. Fastly is the only other CDN I could really consider, but their featureset just doesn't compare.

>and yet there still isn't a viable competitor to Cloudflare.

Cloudflare isn’t even a viable cloudflare. They lost 100 million dollars last year.

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

#56

Post by Animats »

SamWhited wrote: post #20

I don't want to diminish the good things Cloudflare has done for privacy on the web, and I welcome alternatives to Google Analytics, but Cloudflare's mission is to get the entire web behind them and give them complete control over all their TLS certificates, traffic, and now analytics. They may be okay right now, but there is absolutely nothing stopping the next CEO, or some future board or big investor group from ch…

give them complete control over all their TLS certificates

Yes. Cloudflare is both a middlebox service and a certificate authority that can issue itself an SSL cert for any web site. What could possibly go wrong?

Take a look at the certificate for https://ycombinator.com

It's issued by Cloudflare to Cloudflare for the domains "*.ycombinator.com", with an organization of "Cloudflare, Inc."

Oh, and Cloudflare is also a DNS service and a domain registrar. They really do have the power to take over any domain at any time.

It's their web.

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

#57

Post by ac29 »

manigandham wrote: post #54
DoctorOW wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The place where Cloudflare truly doesn't have competition is in the non-enterprise space. If you're worried about your blog or SMB website getting overloaded or attacked you'd probably be pretty tempted to switch to Cloudflare's free plan. I can't imagine Akamai or Verizon even bothering themselves with a customer that small.

And many of those small customers have turned into large customers. Clearly their success shows that it's a big market so it's even more strange that there's such a lack of competition.

As near as I can tell, Cloudflare has never turned a profit, so its debatable to what extent they have been a "success". Not every business is comfortable running at a loss indefinitely.

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

#58

Post by hinkley »

SahAssar wrote: post #26
uluyol wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see Cloudflare ever capturing even >50% of the market by bandwidth. Companies who have big enough demands (Netflix, Amazon, YouTube) are simply better off managing their own CDNs and I think that customer needs are varied enough that Cloudflare simply won't be able to satisfy all customers. If you go along with the above premise, I don't see what the problem is. You will always have the option of switching CD…

I've always thought of cloudflare as a plan to centralize the traffic that is not large enough to warrant their own CDN. All the examples you mentioned run their own content delivery in some way. IMO cloudflare represents the death of the small player on the public internet, before it most small players ran their own internet-facing services, with it many choose to just run behind cloudflare.

In public policy, a plan that only the rich can buy their way out of is generally frowned upon by the Left.

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

#59

Post by hinkley »

fefe23 wrote: post #32

I don't understand. How is it better privacy-wise to give your users' data to big tech company B from California (Cloudflare) instead of big tech company A from California (Google)? I as your user did not consent to you giving my data to anybody in the first place. In fact I did not even want YOU to collect data on me. Surely the privacy problem is collecting your users' data and giving it away in the first place, no…

You know how in the police procedural dramas the detective has to tell people that they aren't from Immigration/DEA in order to get them to stop running away/talk to them?

It's the same Principle of Least Privilege. You divide power between parties that have no incentive to collaborate, and the little guy doesn't get squished as bad (or at least, as fast).

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

#60

Post by Kalium »

r1ch wrote: post #49
saagarjha wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flexible SSL/TLS is useful as it truly does provide some of the benefits of a secure connection–it certainly prevents ISP ad injection and casual coffee shop network sniffing–but its major problem is the one you've identified, which is that it's difficult to distinguish from a "true" SSL connection. I suspect the people who are using this feature are doing so because they won't be using a secure connection at all oth…

I've had Flexible SSL default on several times when setting up domains, it's not always a conscious choice. For small businesses who perhaps don't know any better, they move their site to CF, see the green lock in the browser and think everything is fine. It's an extremely dangerous feature and for a security company CF should really be doing better.

How would you go about helping small businesses who don't know any better do things correctly in a way that would be easy for those with sharply limited technical resources to implement?
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