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Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

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Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#321

Post by jart »

teeray wrote: post #312
jart wrote: post #310

I've never understood how people can muster such hatred for a company that makes all the most outstanding technology products and then gives them away for free. The mental backflips that must take.

I think it’s because that they know it’s not free. It’s a subscription service paid for in information supplied by users. For some, this is an acceptable trade. Others would like to pay for services in dollars instead, but that’s not an option in many cases.

Do you believe that paid services don't collect data? It's impossible to not collect data for web services. These days even local applications you need to pay money for, like Photoshop, collect tons of information, and we don't have a clear picture of why exactly they need it. With Google we know that they don't sell our data and that the only thing they care about is being able to use the data to show better ads. They also give us the freedom to use an ad blocker if we choose, so what's not to love?

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#322

Post by vinger »

cookiengineer wrote: post #320
boplicity wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Huh? Analytics is how you focus on your product. For the first decade of my career, I really believed this, and spent a lot of time doing split tests, and studying analytics, and trying to "make things better" by understanding the numbers as they were given to me. This was a mistake. I've since learned that these numbers will rarely help me make meaningful improvements to my product, and my business. Sure, they can…

The issue I have with analytics, additional to your (imho) valid points is that lots of practical users seem to always measure the wrong endpoints and don't include negative outcomes. Leads are useless without measuring how many people bounced off your shitty online shop, because they couldn't understand your UI. Staying time is useless without measuring closed tabs, because your website is unreadable with ads. The i…

I agree with you in theory but I'll point out you do measure bounce rate and reoccuring vs new visitors and staying time at the same time to give you that exact view.

But I agree they measure the wrong end points or rather they measure too many end points for me to make sense of which one is better. The goal of overall traffic sometimes works against keeping bounce rates low or staying time high.

In the end you would think products sold matters. But an over promising website will over hype and under deliver causing returns or bad reviews which may affect future sales. The message has to describe the product but still meet the market's demand.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#323

Post by VRay »

dealforager wrote: post #278
aembleton wrote: post #263

This ends with the author promoting his new 'bootstrapped app': https://keepthescore.co/ That website uses Google Analytics!

Well, it looks like they succeeded in their goal which was to funnel traffic to their site. It's now a top post on HN, with a top comment directly linking to their site, and I'm sure it will be shared in other places. This is partly why I'm not sure about blocking ads. I'd rather have ads be ads, and not have to read everything like it's a research paper to know if it's secretly an ad. Aside from personal blogs and f…

> to know if it's secretly an ad

Well, I got bad news for you, buddy, it isn't a new thing and it isn't just the internet.. http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#324

Post by eggtro »

jaywalk wrote: post #34
z92 wrote: post #23

Parse your server's access log file. The way it had been done for decades. "Analog" was popular then, Should be better options now.

My server's access logs are almost useless when I've got an SPA with a significant amount of client-side functionality.

Well that's your own fault for using inferior technologies.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#325

Post by ColFrancis »

jamesdhutton wrote: post #161

The author blames Google for the fact that recipe sites force you to wade through a long preamble before you get to the recipe. But if internet advertising didn't exist, then the recipe site would be charging him for the recipe. Recipe authors have to make a living somehow. If he doesn't want ads in his recipes, then he could always go out and buy a recipe book.

I don't think this would be the case. (A proportion of) People love to share things like recipes, they would share them regardless. Some other people found they can monetise recipes by putting ads on their sites. They have an incentive for SEO while the other people likely care less and so when we look around we see a bunch of ad-supported recipe sites.

It is a little short sighted to then conclude that only ad-supported websites share recipes.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#328

Post by gorgoiler »

Quite the provocative intro.

Does Google make money to make the world a better place, or does Google make the world a better place in order to make loadsa money?

By what evidence do we distinguish the two? Is Google majority controlled by its idealist founders still, or is it a money spinning machine for the pension funds which own it?

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#329

Post by gorgoiler »

iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote: post #39

I'm coming around to the idea that Google (and Facebook etc) need to be called out and held accountable for the "negative externalities" that come with their business model, the same as if a company was polluting the physical environment. Google has turned much of the internet into a wasteland (there are examples as it related to news in the article but this is true for most content). They don't have to pay for this…

Exactly.

Ask yourself the following questions, and interesting conclusions can be drawn:

Why don’t we have more alternatives to Google?

What is holding back the competition, and how do we fix that?

Should search even be a commercial activity? (Public libraries aren’t.)

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