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There's an entire industry around parsing logs though. Even "big data" companies outsource their log parsing.

Requiring every website to create graphs and stats from log files is not practical, especially with websites that don't have a constant developer on it. Think blogs, recipe websites, restaurants. Google Analytics provides an insanely good value for them and it's a good thing.

It's not like pre Google Analytics we had a golden age of website stats.

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Why do you need those stats anyway?

It's not like your webmaster is load-balancing your cluster using Google Analytics feed. Let webmasters use tools for webmasters, and get rid of the marketing crap.

The numbers are hugely valuable for small businesses in particular. It enables A-B testing of pages/posts, insight into which external platforms are providing the most traction, etc.

Essentially, it enables you as a small business to determine where you should be focusing what's probably a very limited budget in order to connect with audiences who are actually interested in your product/service. There's no exploitation or sale of data or misuse of private info involved.

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