Ask HN: What's your preferred way of saving your Google Analytics 3 data?

Id say it's really up to you. Like someone else mentioned, they really made this transition difficult. For example, limiting the amount of conversion tracking you can have to 25 which forces you to use data layer tracking over anything else with fear you'll run out.

well you should be able to place more "sub" conversions into parameters of the same event name

As a very casual GA user, I'm just curious why they made the transition so freaking painful.

true, i think the new design saves them money (more efficient data model); and drives people into BigQuery which will eventually be paid. But i have to say that GA4+BigQuery gives a powerful combination.

BigQuery.