Cringe because it's listening to the kooks in tinfoil hats. The same sort of people who say the 5G is coming to get them, and Covid Vaccines make you magnetic.
3 days later, EU signs off on data transfer.
There's something to be said for not wasting time on changes that don't matter in the end. All these people getting worked up for nothing.
Cringe because... "Why bother?" and more so, "Why talk about it?"
If Google isn't in compliance, Google will get there... or appeal the ruling, or find some other way so that every user of GA doesn't have to migrate off it.
So I find it cringe because I see it as the tech equivalent of those people who rave about 5G making their COVID vaccines magnetic. It's just GA... use it, don't use it. But jumping to comply with a poorly written law, and saying like, "See this law that is poorly written deserves our respect!" Meh. It'll all get overturned. It's a poorly written law.
Plus there are plenty of places to go to "get your GA into compliance" without uninstalling GA.
I wear a tinfoil hat as much as the next guy, and I have studied up on GDPR rules at work, and all I can say is they are designed to basically give any country the ability to say, "We don't like you, Americans. You are bad and we don't like you."
Like it or not, we're all connected. You can look at websites in France, or Germany, or America.
Having different rules for the data makes sense at the company-level, or server-level. "Here are the rules for Norwegian companies..."
But it just doesn't make a lot of sense for French laws to apply to US-servers. Where does that end? If Alabama passes a law saying "You have to have just English on your website..." but Canada says, "You have to have your website in French and English..." who wins? What do the developers use as the source of truth for their requirements?
And if we have to have one version of the website for each and every state and country... isn't that problematic... I mean you get that's problematic, right?
I think these courts ruling against Google are small courts, I think it'll get overturned. I think it likely has more to do with finding different ways to punish Google / Apple / other tech companies for not paying more taxes inside of those countries.
EU nations set up a lot of taxes, then get upset when global companies don't choose to build offices there. All of the regulation around data just feels like another "what can we do to be petty in response for them not paying us more taxes?"
Exactly like the USB-C adapter thing.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
Google is skeezy, I get it... but fragmenting the web into a different set of rules for viewers in every nation... that's not the answer. It really can't be the answer.
> all I can say is they are designed to basically give any country the ability to say, "We don't like you, Americans. You are bad and we don't like you."
I agree, but that boat has sailed, and now Homebrew is dealing with it.
It's not like Google can't get all the data it wants from the people using Chrome.
All GA really does is ensure the non-Chrome users get captured by Google.
And -- more importantly -- give you insight into what Google sees on your site.
So if you turn off GA... sure you sort of hinder Google... in that Google gets maybe 10% less usage data from your users (at most 10%).
But you take away your ability to see what they see about you.
Google is still 90%+ of search traffic. So moving away from GA just feels like putting your head in the sand.
So I don't know, I mean I get that you don't want to be tracked, and have your data shared, but that's not what moving away from GA solves.
I don't know what moving away from GA solves.