I don't disagree, but in a bit of fairness, a lot of people just use GA for page-counts and basic correlation stuff...you could do that in a relatively small amount of frontend JS stuff and a slightly-more-complex backend API to handle the basic correlation stuff.

That said, that will only do about .01% of all the features of GA; like the infamous "FTP vs. Dropbox" the premise itself isn't exactly "wrong", just missing a bigger point.

Could you link me to the FTP vs. Dropbox discussion? I am curious. I haven't used either for years and the implication seems to be that there is a profound difference, so I wonder what it is.