Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Companies must stop using Google Analytics

imy.se

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 672 posts

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#161

Post by conradfr »

pSYoniK wrote: post #59

What I am curios about is how much people actually use ALL the analytics information provided by a lot of these tools. I know Matomo and other such open source/self-hostable solutions, but how much info do you really use? I think for most use cases users would want to know if their content is consumed/read. Maybe how long someone spends on it and where they came from. For this sort of stuff you can write a small scri…

With SPAs and mobile apps server logs won't be accurate and that much useful.

Tracking events is actually useful to see which features are used etc.

It's not all marketing and evil ads.

Having said that, GA4 is awful as a casual user.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#162

Post by openplatypus »

If you need a powerhouse like Google Analytics and are not afraid of complex UI, go with Matomo. Even better if you self-host and have people to support it.

If want something lighter that is just a turn key solution but lets you grow (collecting more data for users who gave you consent, or being super strict about privacy without consent) then go with Wide Angle Analytics (our product).

The time when GA was the only option is long gone.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#163

Post by dijit »

ttctciyf wrote: post #147
dijit wrote: post #34

My sister-in-law (girlfriends brothers girlfriend, not that it matters) recently studied for a data analytics certification. Actually several. The entire course (located on here: https://medieinstitutet.se ) is based on Google Analytics. Now her entire value is tied to the use of Google Analytics, she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant, nobody would want to retrain for 6…

> will be economically useless if it is banned. Economically set back, maybe. "Useless" (with its implication of permanence) is way OTT.

How many can afford to spend 6 months re-training, and even worse: how many companies are willing to hire people who have no experience in their specific tool.

I don't think it's permanent, but it does make them economically useless until such a time as they retrain.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#164

Post by thissitesucks0 »

janus24 wrote: post #39
esalman wrote: post #8

Unrelated: I used ChatGPT to generate remark.js presentation HTML code from some content. It did generate the code, but it inserted a GA snippet along with a random GA account code at the bottom of the code. I did not even catch it immediately (laziness, totally my fault), but noticed it a couple of days later when I was modifying the presentation.

> totally my fault IMHO, it's not totally your fault; private information shouldn't be shared with others. It's your responsibility to verify what ChatGPT is writing before you use it; it's OpenAI's responsibility to not share private information.

[flagged]

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#165

Post by [deleted] »

wyufro wrote: post #151
leononame wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you could use a salt, right?

Only if the salt is kept secret. There also needs to be a different salt value per ip, obviously. But given those conditions, it works. Of course, it would be just as simple to use the salt as-is, in that case, since you have to look it up anyway.

[deleted]

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#166

Post by thissitesucks0 »

hamasho wrote: post #50

I've finally come to the conclusion that user tracking is generally a poor practices and should be regulated. As a web developer, I didn't see it as a big problem. We always do it to maximize ad revenue, find out where users leave to increase conversion rate, and simply to improve UX. But even when the intent is to improve UX, tracking is inappripriate. Imagine if a robot vacuum recorded videos of your home and uploa…

[flagged]

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#167

Post by nologic01 »

When I visit a company site and it uses google analytics I know they are either: lazy, ignorant or hostile towards their (potential) clients.

This set of possibilities spans all cases and none is actually a positive signal.

Companies (and any entity that has an online presence for that matter) are entitled to know what people are doing in their platform and use any appropriate tool for that purpose. They are not entitled to share that with anyone without the explicit warning and approval of their users.

The Web as a digital predation ground where the amoral fleece the ignorami must stop.

While (commercial) life is not exactly an ethical showcase, the digital version as it has come to evolve is particularly out of kilt with common norms.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#168

Post by MrVandemar »

DeathArrow wrote: post #113
dijit wrote: post #34

My sister-in-law (girlfriends brothers girlfriend, not that it matters) recently studied for a data analytics certification. Actually several. The entire course (located on here: https://medieinstitutet.se ) is based on Google Analytics. Now her entire value is tied to the use of Google Analytics, she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant, nobody would want to retrain for 6…

Many people depend on YouTube or Instagram to make money. If YouTube and Instagram bans them - and it happens - they lose the ability to make money.

Then they will learn an important lesson.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#169

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

conradfr wrote: post #161
pSYoniK wrote: post #59

What I am curios about is how much people actually use ALL the analytics information provided by a lot of these tools. I know Matomo and other such open source/self-hostable solutions, but how much info do you really use? I think for most use cases users would want to know if their content is consumed/read. Maybe how long someone spends on it and where they came from. For this sort of stuff you can write a small scri…

With SPAs and mobile apps server logs won't be accurate and that much useful. Tracking events is actually useful to see which features are used etc. It's not all marketing and evil ads. Having said that, GA4 is awful as a casual user.

Depends on the SPA, plenty of them fire enough requests to the server for server side logs to be useful.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#170

Post by fullstackchris »

dijit wrote: post #34

My sister-in-law (girlfriends brothers girlfriend, not that it matters) recently studied for a data analytics certification. Actually several. The entire course (located on here: https://medieinstitutet.se ) is based on Google Analytics. Now her entire value is tied to the use of Google Analytics, she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant, nobody would want to retrain for 6…

> That said; we also have "Cloud Engineer" as a job title, so I'm not sure we will learn this lesson.

Comparing something as vast and broadly reaching as "Cloud" is a disengenous comparison to something as specific as a tool like Google Analytics, kind of a wierd comparison IMO. The entire pattern of tech is towards the "cloud" - even if you refuse to use the big ones like Amazon, Microsoft, or Google, it's still technically "cloud" if it's managed servers (wherever they may be).

To be honest I never got into the hype behind Google Analytics and I'm glad that I never spent more than 5 minutes at a time dropping the occasional tag on sites I built. (I've also never worked for anyone big enough where the analytics ultimately proved useful or valuable anyway). These tags are now easy to remove by deleting a few lines of code. I really wonder if the larger orgs really should have spent the extra few hours / weeks of development to develop an in house solution all along...

Post reply on HN