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Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

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Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#831

Post by aksss »

wongarsu wrote: post #534
mediascreen wrote: post #412

I think we (in the EU) will soon realise the bizarre consequences of these regulations. European startups will not be able to use standard SaaS or PaaS tools (like AWS, Azure, Mailchimp, PayPal etc) if they are based in the US (like most of them are). No cloud services, no Office 365 or Google Workspace. It will take forever to build up a similar ecosystem in Europe and I think most successful European entrepreneurs…

> like AWS, Azure, Mailchimp, PayPal etc [...] No cloud services, no Office 365 or Google Workspace. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but imho AWS, GCP and Azure are popular with startups because of their generous free credits, not because they are good tools for startups. As a startup you are typically better served by a DigitalOcean-level of complexity, and there are plenty of such offers in the EU (Hetzner Cloud, Grids…

The free credits are nice, but run out quickly. Azure is expensive, but has a lot of nice tools from key vaults, log analyzers, CDN, databases, pipelines, to firewalls. I mean, yeah, you can implement similar stuff on a DO platform but you're going to be wiring it all up yourself, taking on the liability for keeping it all secure, and providing the warranty for its availability and effectiveness. The value to AWS/GCP/Azure is far beyond free credits. They've commoditized services - it rarely makes sense to pay for in-house expertise in managing those services yourself.

Also, the offline version of Office is going away, to my knowledge. I think the current boxed version is the last boxed version they plan to sell.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#832

Post by lillecarl »

aksss wrote: post #783
nickpp wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses exists for consumers. Fragmenting hurts people - European users - in the first place. I see very little advantages from these privacy laws but I use and appreciate US businesses every day.

What, you don't appreciate a pop-up on every web page telling you that cookies are going to be used? XD

The cookie banners are a byproduct of companies still wanting to abuse your data, when was the last time you saw a cookie pop-up on HN? Logged in or not.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#833

Post by withinboredom »

verdverm wrote: post #803
withinboredom wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big companies buy the little companies as soon as they look like they may be a threat. It’s not monumental or hard to compete with them.

I think you are underestimating the effort required to produce an suite of office products. Libre office is a third option, but does it have much usage? Why or why not? Could you sustain a development team capable of creating this with a limited market and revenue stream?

Sorry I wasn’t clear. The reason there are no competing products isn’t because it is hard. It’s because they keep getting bought as soon as someone does “good enough”

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#834

Post by dudus »

kergonath wrote: post #515
waffleiron wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think we (in the EU) will soon realise the bizarre consequences of these regulations. Could this not also be said about US regulations such as CLOUD act, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Executive Order 12333. I don't think it's accurate to solely blame the EU when this is in response to legislation that gives/gave the US access to all types of personal data on European citizens.

> I don't think it's accurate to solely blame the EU when this is in response to legislation that gives/gave the US access to all types of personal data on European citizens. I would argue that the Americans getting better privacy protections and working with other countries instead of forcing American companies to behave illegally abroad would be a much better solution than the Europeans watering down their privacy…

Maybe that's true for the Microsofts and Google's of the world. But for smaller companies trying to provide SaaS or PaaS it totally keeps them from entering the market. So in the end it only increases the difficulty to compete in EU and increases the power of these mega corps.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#835

Post by frollo »

mmastrac wrote: post #609
zaptrem wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All they need now is some sort of ISP level filter to make sure nobody loses their privacy to US servers. They could call it a "Great Firewall" maybe.

Protecting the privacy of citizens is not akin to society-wide censorship, a la China. This is a disingenuous argument.

But it infringes on my freedom to get spied on by shady companies and their government!

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#836

Post by zelphirkalt »

verdverm wrote: post #826
zelphirkalt wrote: post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If US intelligence wants to have access, they will, via their law, as far as I understand. They will require Alphabet to give the data, Alphabet will get it from Google, and that is it. No need to listen or intercept anything. Best thing you can do is not to make use of GA in the first place, so that no such data of visitors of your websites exists in Google infrastructure.

I think your understanding of US intelligence and forcing companies into compliance needs updating. First, it is exaggerated, which is not surprising in today's media and outrage climate. Second, things have changed since Snowden and the congressional oversight had been rolled out. Third, GA is not that valuable compared to other sources. Your chief complaining would be better spent about how Google uses the data rat…

I agree, that one should be more worried about how Google uses the data.

I think I wrote about the US intelligence thingy, because it was closer to the topic. The question, why the court ruling went this way and what it rests on. If there was no possibility for the US to access the data, then Google could probably simply pinky finger swear, that they are not doing anything evil with the data and EU law might be fine with it.

Does it matter, whether the scenario is "exaggerated"? If it is possible, it needs to be considered by the law. Otherwise it might soon become less exaggerated and more reality than we would wish.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#837

Post by barbazoo »

mediascreen wrote: post #412

I think we (in the EU) will soon realise the bizarre consequences of these regulations. European startups will not be able to use standard SaaS or PaaS tools (like AWS, Azure, Mailchimp, PayPal etc) if they are based in the US (like most of them are). No cloud services, no Office 365 or Google Workspace. It will take forever to build up a similar ecosystem in Europe and I think most successful European entrepreneurs…

> European startups will not be able to use standard SaaS or PaaS tools (like AWS, Azure, Mailchimp, PayPal etc) if they are based in the US

PaaS and IaaS providers all have a presence in the EU or is that still not good enough to pass the regulation that's in place?

SaaS I get it, they'd have to create a presence in the EU but I don't think that's a bad thing. They will, at least the big ones you mentioned. And if that's a problem for smaller SaaS providers then the market will have a solution for that emerge over time.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#838

Post by VikingCoder »

lillecarl wrote: post #832
aksss wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, you don't appreciate a pop-up on every web page telling you that cookies are going to be used? XD

The cookie banners are a byproduct of companies still wanting to abuse your data, when was the last time you saw a cookie pop-up on HN? Logged in or not.

If only there were some way that European citizens could have told their browsers to not accept Cookies, then maybe we all wouldn't have to click on those banners all the damn time.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#839

Post by croes »

rdiddly wrote: post #533
croes wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, the external company bookkeeper doesn't know which of the hundreds or thousands transactions are done by me. He doesn't even know how often I bought something. And even if, that knowledge is nothing compared to the millions of data points of services like google analytics.

If it were true as AdriaanvRossum said above that Simple Analytics data has "no identifiers" (taking that at face value for now) then that seems exactly analogous to those cash transactions someotherperson describes.

Not quite analogous. If they ask for my zip code every time I buy something cash that's more similar.

It's still a difference between not having data and not storing it. The later needs trust, the former doesn't.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#840

Post by VikingCoder »

karmelapple wrote: post #791
VikingCoder wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely fragmenting the internet. We had PII on Azure. We wanted to do business in France. We had to fork our services, and run a full stack on a crappy provider in France. They charged a lot more, would take weeks of vacation with zero support for us. It was a freaking nightmare. EDIT: I love the responses I'm getting. People are in absolute denial that this does in fact fragment the internet. You may bel…

Quick question: was there a reason you could not use Azure’s region support? https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/geog... Or was it before Azure had that? Looks like they’ve had it for awhile, at least back to 2009 or 2010.

France, Year Opened 2018, is what I see on that page.

This was impacting us in 2014 to 2016, as I remember.

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