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Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

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Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#161

I see a lot of suggestions for free or open-source analytics packages, but I would refrain from recommending anything you haven't personally used. I've tried to separate myself from Google in various ways, and one of those was to replace Google Analytics with open source software. I tried several; they're all either non-functional out of the box, or require significant time investment to even start approaching Google…

> I tried several; they're all either non-functional out of the box, or require significant time investment to even start approaching Google Analytics.

It's almost as if you need to be a software engineer and do actual software engineering, to responsibly use tools like analytics.

> I ended up going back to Google. It took the same amount of time to set up as when I initially set it up: around 2 minutes of adding the tracking code and uploading it.

So how much effort is the privacy of your visitors worth, then?

It sounds like deep down you know the right thing to do, which is a lot of work, but seeing everybody (in your bubble of technical peers) just as easily use Google Analytics, makes you feel like you're owed the difference to these profits.

Maybe there shouldn't be a 2-minute turnkey solution to analytics, because even if it's self-hosted, your next excuse is going to be that it requires a significant time effort to keep it secure and act responsibly with the data.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's swell and all, but you are going to find businesses still going to Google Analytics because it is easy to setup and free. The cost to consumers by having their data shared everywhere isn't even thought on the horizon.

I'm not ever sure how that comment even relates to mine. I just explained the goals of various OSS project as I understand them. I never said anything about setup costs or price.

They mean that people are going to make excuses regardless, because you get more features for less time, never mind the consequences.

It's people that struggle with the conundrum: "X, Y, or ethical. Pick two".

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#163
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could write the 10 lines of JavaScript that'll do what 99% of people use Google analytics for

Feel free to post those lines

I reckon you'd need more than 9 "\n" characters to get it done.

But in seriousness the 10 lines would be just use local storage or wotnot to store a tag, then call tracker.com?tag=... on each page load. "Rest is done on the server (TM)"

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