Hacker News Reader

Comment by going_to_800 | Hacker News Reader

It's from 2017 but even more valid today. GA is blocked by most ad blockers thus no company can rely confidently on it anymore. uBlock blocks also a few other tools like MixPanel that helps companies understand their users behavior and how they use their product.

I can't believe how ignorant people that say "use server logs" are. They clearly haven't done any online marketing or run an online business, yet they want better and cheaper products - even free if possible.

How do you think a company gets to improve and optimize their product? By surveys? I think many assume the entire analytics required for a business is just reading a few GET requests from the server logs and categorizing them by user agent.

View on HN

> They clearly haven't done any online marketing or run an online business

As far as I'm concerned online marketing is cancer. It acts against me, wastes my time, etc. Marketing should be about presenting your product in the best light possible, and stop there. You shouldn't be allowed to track or waste other people's time to promote your product - being in business is not a right after all.

> How do you think a company gets to improve and optimize their product? By surveys?

Yes exactly - companies were in business just fine for over a century and they didn't have analytics, why should it suddenly be required?

I really hope one day you start your own online business and see how it's actually run.

It's one thing you imagine a business should be run in an utopian world where people respond to surveys and know exactly what they need to solve their issues (Henry Ford said it perfectly "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses") and another thing how it works in real world.

> Yes exactly - companies were in business just fine for over a century and they didn't have analytics, why should it suddenly be required?

This is a very ignorant response so I assume all your answers are the same.

> As far as I'm concerned online marketing is cancer.

I think you meant "advertising"... if yes, in some cases you're right.

> This is a very ignorant response so I assume all your answers are the same.

If that is ignorant then I guess most companies founded in the 20th century (without analytics, stalking and targeted advertising) must not be real then? In fact I'd argue most of the money that funds the cancer that is modern advertising, marketing, etc was made before such things were actually invented.

> I think you meant "advertising"

I kind of agree, and this is why I clarified my definition of marketing. For me, marketing is about putting your product in the best light possible on your website (or physical space if you're into retail), so that people who stumble upon your product (randomly or by searching for it) will be encouraged to buy it.

The modern definition of marketing however seems to be stalking (aka analytics), spam (newsletters, push notifications), creepy targeted advertising (often relying on the previous items) and so on, essentially forcing your product onto people who haven't asked anything. I consider this modern marketing to be cancer.

You know, before UX was captured by A/B test fanatics, there was a discipline known as "user testing". It had all kinds of interesting tools, for dealing with all kinds of user distribution and sample size.

so that makes spying and pervasive tracking okay? because it makes money? no! businesses have managed without previously. the world won't end without GA.

Google Analytics spies you? Lol. Those tools that you use daily on the browser that saves you time and makes your life easier got to that point because they had a way to learn how they were used. Seems that you don't make a difference between ad related tracking and product based tracking.

> Those tools that you use daily on the browser that saves you time and makes your life easier got to that point because they had a way to learn how they were used.

As far as I am aware, Hacker News has never used Google Analytics.

Hackers News doesn't need GA. A product that relies on data to make decisions does. People here are delusional, sorry. I don't care I get downvoted, but that's the reality.

I'm totally against ad tracking where a company can identify what I do on multiple websites and link my browsing behavior. But I have no problem to let a company track my clicks and what I do on their website if it's used to improve their product and ultimately to benefit from it.

Google is an advertising company. Google Analytics permits it to identify what you do on multiple websites and link your browsing behaviour.

And yet you have no problem using it when it's included as a third-party script, because you want to give the first-party that information. Why do you suddenly forget about the third-party (Google) in this framing?

> A product that relies on data to make decisions does.

My experience tells me that most "data-driven" products are absolute trash. The best products I've used were developed in the good, old-school way of someone having a concept of how the product should be, common sense, user research and feedback.

Nowadays I see shit changing all the time for no good reason because I guess somewhere there must be a 0.1% short-term increase in some metric, while annoying a bunch of people and eroding their goodwill.

I also don't feel "free" using a product with analytics because I don't always want my usage pattern to skew the data and make the product change in any way. There are times when I do weird things for good reasons, but it doesn't mean I want the weird thing to become the primary way to interact with the product because someone wanted to make a "data driven" decision.

> I'm totally against ad tracking where a company can identify what I do on multiple websites and link my browsing behavior

You do understand that third-party analytics services can do exactly that? And those provided by advertising companies like Google probably do use the data for their own purposes as well.

>Hackers News doesn't need GA. A product that relies on data to make decisions does.

That doesn't mean you have a right to collect it from me, and if your business model fails as a result, well that's a shame for you.

Or the ones commenting never used. I am certain many people read, chuckle and don't bother explaining. Any small/medium size company running an e-commerce platform will be using Google products, including GTM, analytics, ads, youtube ads.

It is impossible not to use it at this point. If you don't use it, you will be forced to add it for another 3rd party working with you or with your client.

> It is impossible not to use it at this point.

Maybe the reason is that a lot of products are just useless trash and don't actually fill a legitimate need? They only sell because of the advertising exploiting a weakness in people's mind, but wouldn't sell on their own because it turns out people don't actually need this product?

If you make a product that truly solves a problem, it should sell itself. A good example of this is Monzo - they founded a new modern bank that addresses all the problems of the legacy banking industry. The product sold itself and they reached a million customers without any marketing.

In any case, whether you need ads and tracking to be in business is one thing, but being in business and profitable is not a right, so if you can't do so while respecting the law such as the GDPR then it shouldn't be our problem as users.

> Google Analytics spies you?

That is literally its purpose, yes.

> Seems that you don't make a difference between ad related tracking and product based tracking.

Now that's an interesting question - does Google combine data from GA into their other tracking, or does that data stay separate?

It isn't that hard to get around ad blockers for doing analytics.

You can hide third party tools behind a proxy for example or write your own custom tracking software.

Oh yes, you can explain that to the advertising agencies which mostly run Google Ads for clients. Google ads need google analytics 100%. Any online marketing will go thru GTM (google tag manager). They are dominant, a monopoly.

YC news tech gurus will come up with all sorts of geeky server side solutions but people need to accept Google Ads is a must for most companies out there, and one will use google analytics one way or another. No escape.

Well let's try in small ways to change that, for instance by blocking it and encouraging others to do the same.

> yet they want better and cheaper products - even free if possible.

I want good things, I have them, and now I want greedy, needy people to stop pushing their mediocre, poorly understood imitations to drown out the really good things we might use and nurture instead, hurting us all and even themselves in the process.

> How do you think a company gets to improve and optimize their product? By surveys?

If what you make serves a purpose other than generating needs to make a profit from, then you'll probably be fine with mostly simply paying attention to what you're making, using it yourself, and occasionally making surveys and collecting metrics from volunteers to see if there's anything you missed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com