First off, let’s just agree that I know that my blog dropping Google Analytics is going to have exactly zero effect on Google. K?

I’m under no illusions that my little corner of the web is somehow special or important. Hell, I haven’t even looked at the analytics in over a year.

So with that out of the way…

Why’d I Have Analytics Anyway?

Mostly vanity if I’m being honest. It’s fun to see a visitor count and a (hopefully) increasing numbers. It’s neat to see the geo-ip estimation of where readers are from. Most of all, analytics feed that little ego-monster: People are listening to me! I must be important!

But I don’t really need a full-fledged Analytics system for that! I could run a script on my server that just parses my access logs. So why Google Analytics?

1. I’m Lazy

Google Analytics is a hugely popular product. It has drop-in implementations for pretty much any blog software you’d choose. For me, it was literally just copying two template files into my Hugo blog project.

2. It’s Pretty!

I mean, look at it:

So much information in such polished graphs! Loading that up and seeing all the hacker-bots that are pinging my site every night was such fun!

The Trouble with Analytics

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the role of technology in our society. Of course, when we talk about “technology”, generally people are referring to Internet technology and the World-Wide-Web in specific.

See, the problem is that the default business model on the Internet is Surveillance Capitalism - companies capture fine-grained information about their users, then sell it on to other companies in order to improve (at least, in theory) the efficacy of targeted advertising. Google are the masters of this business model.

Whether you use Google services directly or not, your computer has been tagged, profiled and fingerprinted by Google (and Facebook and others. Google is hardly alone in this practice). Google remembers not just all your searches, but thanks to their popular analytics package, a large number of the sites you vist as well. With all that data at their disposal, Google has no problem identifying say, your political affiliation, your sexual orientation, the age and number of children in your home, your income bracket, the car you drive, the shoes you wear, the video game you’re playing, the color of your skin and which god you worship.

And thanks to fingerprinting, even if you think you’re browsing in “private” mode, Google knows who you are wherever you go.

The modern commercial Internet is built on a foundation of studying everyone in minute detail for the purpose of selling you more crap.

The 800 Lb Gorilla

I don’t believe that Google is a benevolent or even neutral force in the world. They have built a One Trillion dollar juggernaut based on owning profiles of us all so detailed as to make the Gestapo’s wildest ambitions seem tame.

Their outsize impact on the Internet is undeniable. Their AdWords program has shaped and reshaped the internet simply through the weight of Google search’s dominance. They’ve parlayed that power into driving Chrome to becoming the dominant Internet Browser. That dominance in turn gives them outsize influence over the design of the Internet itself. Simply by building a feature into their browser, Google can create a de-facto standard. Standards which - somehow - seem to benefit their line of business over competing browsers!

Indeed, at the moment, Google is launching an initiative that would make it impossible for browsers (at least, Chrome-compatible browsers) to block ads on a website. “Well”, I hear you say, “I can switch to FireFox any time I like.” But no. You can’t. If your bank implements Google’s WEI code on their website, well now you have to use Chrome to access your bank, or it just won’t work. Fine. Security in banking is probably a Good Thing. But when CNNBCSN decides to use WEI to ensure that user’s adblocker software breaks, your only choice is to stop browsing the Internet, or to let Google’s Chrome browser fill your eyeball with all the advertisements its masters demand.

So I’m Done

I don’t need analytics for my blog. It was fun. But it was only for fun. I don’t need to continue contributing - even in my negligible way - to Google’s dominance

Indeed, for all I had analytics enabled, I don’t know if anybody actually reads this crap or if all my visitors were just bots sniffing around for vulnerabilities… or any valuable information I’ve left carelessly lying about the place.