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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

#41

The headline is wrong, it should be changed to "Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics ... donate to another large corporation instead!" There are much better options out there. Quite apart from the solutions listed in these comments, a better option is to reconsider whether you really need analytics at all. Maybe the answer is yes if you are a business trying to understand your customers. But not eve…

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

This really reminds me of the infamous "you can just use FTP instead of Dropbox" comment.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#42
post #17

I didn't know about AWS Pinpoint before, but from what I can see, it only offers analytics for email and other messages, not for web pages, so presenting it as a full alternative for Google Analytics is misleading.

The author wrote a tool to make it do that I guess.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#43
post #2

So the solution is to use Amazon's tracker? I appreciate the problem and I would like to stop using GA in my static pages as well, but trading one privately-owned software from a tech giant for another privately-owned software from a different tech giant seems a bit ludicrous. I would readily swap GA for some decent open-source solution though.

I'd say the following to this (very reasonable) argument against using AWS: AWS makes money by selling services, not collecting data. Should Amazon make the leap and start harvesting data from AWS for marketing purposes, the data from their analytics platform will be the least of our worries. Thus far, AWS has proven to be safe for companies to host their data upon, and there have been no leaks of data stored in AWS…

This is why I use Prime photos, instead of Google photos. I need one, so I’ll take the paid one.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#44
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been surprised lately by how much more pleasant, readable and usable the news/blog-web is with JavaScript turned off. JavaScript is basically just used for the user-hostile ad-tech.

I've been wondering about this recently: perhaps we'd actually be better off with simpler browsers that did less so that the websites would do less?

I've been thinking the same thing, and started[0] experimenting[1] with some ideas. I think it be fun to make a web browser that implements a few HTML tags, flexbox and a few other CSS primitives (no animations), and no JS. Sites that are compatible with it would still work on current browsers.

[0] https://anderspitman.net/19/#netcatable

[1] https://anderspitman.net/17/#curlable

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#45
post #2

So the solution is to use Amazon's tracker? I appreciate the problem and I would like to stop using GA in my static pages as well, but trading one privately-owned software from a tech giant for another privately-owned software from a different tech giant seems a bit ludicrous. I would readily swap GA for some decent open-source solution though.

I'd say the following to this (very reasonable) argument against using AWS: AWS makes money by selling services, not collecting data. Should Amazon make the leap and start harvesting data from AWS for marketing purposes, the data from their analytics platform will be the least of our worries. Thus far, AWS has proven to be safe for companies to host their data upon, and there have been no leaks of data stored in AWS…

Or is that wishful thinking? AWS and Amazon are in the buisness of collecting, storing, and processing data.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#46

"My competitors tracking solution is ridiculous. You should get your head examined if you use it. You should use mine instead." Terrible argument.

You seems to have missed the arguments made tho. You get to avoid the cookies and as someone else pointed out Amazon doesn't use the data. It's your data.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#47

"My competitors tracking solution is ridiculous. You should get your head examined if you use it. You should use mine instead." Terrible argument.

You seems to have missed the arguments made tho. You get to avoid the cookies and as someone else pointed out Amazon doesn't use the data. It's your data.

[deleted]

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#48

The headline is wrong, it should be changed to "Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics ... donate to another large corporation instead!" There are much better options out there. Quite apart from the solutions listed in these comments, a better option is to reconsider whether you really need analytics at all. Maybe the answer is yes if you are a business trying to understand your customers. But not eve…

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

A wild 10x engineer appeared

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#50

Interesting that the page breaks if you're using Adblock because of Google Analytics being in the URL. Shows me a fun 'You are not connected to the internet' page that lets you doodle on the page.

Not on Firefox with uBlock Origin.

Using Edge (Chromium) with uBlock Origin
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