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Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

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Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#471
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Italian market doesn’t have to apply to Google USA either. Companies can always choose to ignore a specific nation’s laws[1], they don’t still get access to that nations markets. At the borders the nation state is the one with the guns and firewalls [1] unless you piss off a nation that can project global power, lol if you piss off China or America

First time I've heard of China projecting "global power". Are there cases of it happening?

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/china-the-arctic

https://thediplomat.com/2021/08/chinas-presence-in-africa-is...

https://www.cadtm.org/Chinese-geopolitics-continuities-infle...

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#472
post #91

Another decision in a long stream that will make it much harder for EU start-ups companies to catch up to American ones. With absolutely no improvements to actual EU citizen well being.

I am no EU citizen, however live in Europe and do tech startups. I welcome GDPR as well as this ruling.

It's unethical IMO to send personal data to countries that have weak privacy laws without making it absolutely clear to the user. Which is rarely the case with GA right now.

I switched most my projects to shynet, for me personally that's more than enough information and I have zero worries about tracking and know that some users appreciate my approach.

Edit:// even before GDPR became a thing I worked with several companies who had strict rules about hosting in Europe or even more explicit not hosting in the US.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#473
post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the Italian law that prohibits sending data abroad applies to Google Italia, but Google USA is submitted to the USA law, that says that the USA government can request any data from Google Italia and they are required to get it. So the existence of Google USA makes Google Italia operation illegal.

...in USA.

Well, depends, fundamentally it's a paradox.

Either US company get's the data from the Italian one, making the Italian operation illegal in Italy

Or

The US company doesn't get the data from the Italian one (despite ownership), making the US company illegal in the US.

I don't think anyone is under the illusion that the latter option is chosen when push comes to shove.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, you can't self-host the integration with Google Ads or Search Console, which locks anyone who relies on Google (or Facebook, Microsoft, etc) Ads into the use of Google Analytics/Ads tracking.

Why not? Can’t you still pass the campaign information via the url?

You can send campaign data that way, but to run any kind of effective campaign on Google Ads, you also need to send conversion data back if the user who clicks on your ad actually does the thing you want. You can either use GA or Google Ads own tracking option to set a cookie with a unique ID associated with that ad click and then send that to Google when they convert.

A privacy-conscious serverside GTM/GA implementation won't leak any personal data like IP address to Google, but there's no way to avoid sending the GCLID if you advertise.

A lot of companies are dependent on Google Ads for demand generation, so it's the reason they are sticking with GA even as the writing's on the wall.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this an opportunity for EU startups? By choosing to enforce the law on US companies that EU companies are already generally very compliant with, surely the EU has levelled the playing field for EU companies?

So due to this legislations it is more costly/less profitable for a company to have a European customer compared to US customer. Things like GDPR/lawsuits/bad PR etc. doesn't come for free for companies. So if some startup has more ratio of European users it is at a disadvantage.

GDPR is rarely enforced, we are still In a transition phase and many who start out choose to just ignore it to a degree.

I don't see how it's more costly or less profitable. Judging by the amount of lawsuits per capita I think it's way more likely to get sued in the US than Europe. And guess what's more expensive or complicated for a European company?

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#477
post #445
post #91

Another decision in a long stream that will make it much harder for EU start-ups companies to catch up to American ones. With absolutely no improvements to actual EU citizen well being.

Let me guess, you're from the US and user surveillance is beneficial to your business so naturally everyone with non-capitalist (read not $$$-centric) ideology is plain wrong. EU startups don't have to "catch up" or even compete with US start ups.

read this with a french accent for whatever reason >.<

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Google documentation is for the IP anonymization feature of Universal Analytics, which is being sunset in about a year. Google announced earlier this year that Google Analytics 4, its successor, does not log or store IP address at all. I don’t know whether UA or GA4 service was the subject of the Italy case, but I would not be surprised if it was UA. Most sites have not switched over to GA4 yet.

> Google announced earlier this year that Google Analytics 4, its successor, does not log or store IP address at all. So if I go to a website and it has me load code from Google's servers it's still got to send my IP address to them. I'm not sure why we'd take them at their word that they won't keep that data around (I'd like to see that independently verified). but it'll be sent to the server logs if nothing else. W…

In a privacy-conscious implementation of GTM/GA, those scripts can be loaded from a first-party server controlled by the company, and Google will never see the user's IP address.

There is no real alternative to Google Analytics for most companies because of the Google Ads integration. If you advertise with Google, you need to send them conversion data, which means the GCLID. Without Google Ads, switching would be simple. Most enterprises already pay for other analytics tools.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

since when EU became politically stable? Last time i checked you were at war with Russia.

> since when EU became politically stable? Last time i checked you were at war with Russia. Russia's attack on Ukraine has no relevance at all to whether the EU is or isn't politically stable. There may be other reasons you can cite, in which case fair enough, but that example is a non-EU third party attacking a non-EU third party. And the EU is not at war with Russia.

EU did everything to start it, established economic blockade of Russia and sending weapons to Ukraine. At this point it is a war between Russia and EU in Ukraine.
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