I was so excited to switch from Webtrends to Urchin and back when I still loved Google I was delighted that they bought it out and made it free. Now I wish Google had never touched them.
It is incredible how out of touch with reality GA has become. Nothing is called what it used to be, and not a single straight report with simple familiar figures. Everything is abstracted to the point of it being useless. I am pretty sure I understand what happens with the GA team today [1]
We run self-hosted Matomo for analytics. One of the bonus points, besides actual sane reports is that Matomo can see about ~40% more traffic due to being invisible to blockers while being fully GDPR compliant and providing full privacy for visitors.
[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect...
Would you be willing to elaborate?
Google already had a reputation for slurping up user data, even in 2008 before they bought DoubleClick. It's a no brainer that a targetted advertising company can target ads better if they have as much information about the users as possible.
In 2008, DoubleClick's over the top, obnoxious advertising (banner ads, punch the monkey, etc.) was slowing down in favor of Google's more discrete advertising and data collection. They may have caught on and turned it around eventually, but Google bought them up first.