Most of the people using GA wouldn't be able to set it up correctly. I switched my personal site from GA to Microanalytics, since I wanted to avoid spending time trying to figure out how to configure GA to be conformant.
Google should be the one doing the compliance work. If Italy bans some usage pattern in GA, it's Google that should make it impossible to configure it in non-conformant way.
Some time ago Google gave EU admins the option to select a local regional (EU) server. This means the data is not send to the US. But! It’s still nog fully legal as the Google HQ (and thus the US government( can still access all the data.
The article has the watchdog suggesting exactly that (the specific site has 90 days to use GA in a compliant way, no direct complaint against GA), so it seems from their point of view it's legal.
The title of this post and a lot of the comments are projecting what they want GDPR to be (all non european online entities banned from doing business in the EU) vs how its being enforced.
> just illegal to use in its default state which transmits PII to the US
As I mentioned in a sibling comment, this is technically true but complying with GDPR takes more than unchecking a few boxes. I've never seen any GA set-up that would remotely approach compliance. At minimum, you need to mask IP's before they reach Google, which means standing up a non-Google server to proxy all the hits. That is more complexity than 99+% of GA installations.
My current understanding of google analytics and GDPR compliance is that you can use it in a GDPR compliant manner without that much trouble.
On the older UA there is a simple flag that enables IP anonymization and on the new GA4 there is purportedly no need for it as they don't collect or store the IP at all.
For many clients I have set up a cookie compliance tool like Onetrust, which blocks loading of GA and other scripts with one of the consent popups. With this combined configuration (and having verified nothing sneaks through before someone gives consent) most company legal / compliance teams I have worked with have deemed this to be a fully compliant setup. Of course, this might not be actually compliant, but the company legal team has done some research and arrived at this as the most advantageous position currently available.
I think using a compliance based tool like Onetrust also gives a sense of legal security in that if our configuration is properly set up they are advertising that we then get compliance as part of their service, and so responsibility of a violation could potentially be passed to them in a legal setting.
I understand that this is primarily an advertisement for Posthog, but if you're going to keep posting it you might want to keep it up to date. There are only 4 countries on your map and one of them is:
> The Dutch Data Protection Authority warns that the use of Google Analytics 'may soon no longer be allowed', after a ruling by the Austrian privacy regulator. A definitive conclusion is said to come at the beginning of 2022.
At least you removed "the only open source product analytics platform" and the Google fonts since the last time a Posthog employee posted it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994183
NOYB is the primary source tracking these cases and generally was also responsible for filing the complaints that led to them. All the details are available from NOYB's GDPRhub wiki, https://gdprhub.eu. GDPRhub attempts to provide information on all the European DPAs including how to file complaints. At the least it provides contact info for all the DPAs and English translations of DPA decisions.
As stated in 13 Jan 2022 announcement on noyb.eu, these decisions are generally the result of the "Max Schrems II" decision. After that decision, Schrems filed 101 complaints to DPAs, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Note that the "legality" of Google Fonts, under the default configuration, is also in question. Arguably use of Google Fonts is even more widespread than use of Google Analytics.
Congrats. We also chose to do the analytics ourselves. No tracking, no cookie banners, and probably better stats as well. One thing that Google did very cleverly was to only give GA users the search terms that visitors used to end up on their site.
Unfortunately, you can't self-host the integration with Google Ads or Search Console, which locks anyone who relies on Google (or Facebook, Microsoft, etc) Ads into the use of Google Analytics/Ads tracking.
Our definition of "exceptional scenarios" is clearly not the same... The list of scenarios in article 6 are common business operations covering a huge range of legitimate activities where processing might need to occur; there is little exceptional about them.
Another decision in a long stream that will make it much harder for EU start-ups companies to catch up to American ones. With absolutely no improvements to actual EU citizen well being.
Yes, let's all marvel at the accomplishment of making everything funded by exploitative and intrusive but largely useless advertisements.
All digital startups are literally doomed without the indiscriminate collection of personal tracking data.
Side note: thank you modern adtech for consistently recommending me products I already bought days and weeks before. Very effective. Gullible companies just keep paying cold hard cash for these garbage recommendation systems because some sales rep talks fluffy about AI and machine learning, it's so mindblowing....
here I thought maximum exploitation would be selling someones identity on the dark web but I come to find on HN that it's actually hashed analytics data D: !!!
Isn't this an opportunity for EU startups? By choosing to enforce the law on US companies that EU companies are already generally very compliant with, surely the EU has levelled the playing field for EU companies?
It is. Most startups in the EU have to use more and more businesses in the EU. The selection is little, so way more changes to succeed if your EU based and serve both markets.
I run Simple Analytics [1], which is a privacy-first analytics business from the Netherlands. I see a lot of business from the EU just because we are from the EU as well.
A little advantage for EU analytics startups, disadvantage for all other EU startups and SMBs who have less options for figuring out what users like about their website and offerings.
So due to this legislations it is more costly/less profitable for a company to have a European customer compared to US customer. Things like GDPR/lawsuits/bad PR etc. doesn't come for free for companies. So if some startup has more ratio of European users it is at a disadvantage.
Setting up something like Matomo instead of GA doesn't looks to me like a huge penalizing factor for a startup.
If anything, EU startups could benefit from better control over the tools they use. One interesting halo effect of Google seeing that much data is also that US startup from ex-googlers get a head start on many insights.
take data of your USA customers and sell it to the highest bidder without their consent or even knowledge as you please. don't complain that I have the right to know you do that and disagree to you doing that.
or maybe EU is starring to rely on their own startups.
If I had to chose an analytics software for a customer's website, I'd chose someone in EU for the sole reason that it would be compliant in both EU and the rest of the World.
I am no EU citizen, however live in Europe and do tech startups. I welcome GDPR as well as this ruling.
It's unethical IMO to send personal data to countries that have weak privacy laws without making it absolutely clear to the user. Which is rarely the case with GA right now.
I switched most my projects to shynet, for me personally that's more than enough information and I have zero worries about tracking and know that some users appreciate my approach.
Edit:// even before GDPR became a thing I worked with several companies who had strict rules about hosting in Europe or even more explicit not hosting in the US.
Let me guess, you're from the US and user surveillance is beneficial to your business so naturally everyone with non-capitalist (read not $$$-centric) ideology is plain wrong. EU startups don't have to "catch up" or even compete with US start ups.
Does this imply that the EU is "non-capitalist" or something?
"EU startups don't have to "catch up"..." then don't get surprised when EU talent is poached by US and Asian HRs for x2-x3 rates. And before you're gonna talk about all those "free" (taxpayer funded) services and how no European would ever move to Asia or NA, i'd like to remind you that we're in the remote work world now :)
As an EU citizen, I find it to be a huge improvement to detangle my data from US-American entities. Especially with the election of Trump and January 6th. Maybe Americans haven't fully realized what that meant for US-EU relations for the next hundreds of years. The US is just not a politically stable country until further notice.
Eh? Jan 6 wasn't very noteable (a bunch of disorganized protestors are let into congress, but the state was not meaningfully threatened), the US has long had political instabilities, the business plot was way worse, but who has heard of it now...
Actually, the cookie layers of Google have become a lot better in recent months. I doubt that is was Googles initiative, so I think that all this legal stuff is making a difference. Yes, it is a very slow process, but what would be an alternative?
Yes it doesn't solve the startup problem, but honestly there also also a ton of other laws and regulations outside of data protection which make it hard for startups to prosper. Web Analytics seems a relatively minor problem.
Yikes... Have you ever heard of some of the alternatives?
I self-host Plausible which is GDPR compliant and gives me all of the features that Google Analytics is actually good for. There is so much bloat in GA that provides absolutely no extra value.
I'm skeptical that this is a bad deal for EU citizens.
Nah. The problem here is Google, not analytics in general. You can still use analytics as long as you do it in a privacy-first approach.
These laws also apply to US companies offering their services to in the EU. Frankly, it's about time American companies get reigned in on their privacy abuses. US startup culture has been playing fast and loose with people's data for far too long to disastrous effects.
That's assuming a European GDPR-compliant alternative to Google analytics wouldn't arise. But of course it will. It's not even a very difficult product to build. If anything this is both sticking it to Google and creating opportunities for European startups to fill the void.
The EU hasn’t shaken off their roots in monarchy. Using the power of the state to go after a single private entity since they have a blood feud with said entity and are now finding all sorts of excuses to hit them economically.
I’ve been following the cases with regard to privacy in the EU and it’s a complete joke. You have all these onerous rules against any web technology making it near impossible for startups to function without an army of lawyers. Think I’m exaggerating? Look up the provisions under GDPR for any business, big or small, to set up a website and then process a single user request for their data even without sign in.
The UK is sick and tired of this and has recently begun moving to ignore these onerous rules. All power to them.
You may be looking at this through a very narrow, heavily politicized lens.
First: GDPR is a compromise, so it's a bit uneven. That's partly due to lobbying by google and friends. Second, privacy very much needs protection. Even if you are perfectly fine giving up your privacy, other people aren't. Third: you can actually process user requests. Depending on how you do it, you don't even have to show a banner. Is that really too intrusive?
> The EU hasn’t shaken off their roots in monarchy.
I know, right. I mean obviously the world's most famous royal family (our British one) isn't really a monarchy so that doesn't count. And they certainly don't get previews and vetos on our laws, or given hundreds of millions from the licence fees for offshore wind farms, or own a notable percentage of the land.
As for GDPR, compliance is pretty straightforward provided you aren't being shady to begin with.
And the new UK proposals are much worse and if they go through as they stand will be a nightmare for anyone serving UK visitors.
> The UK is sick and tired of this and has recently begun moving to ignore these onerous rules. All power to them.
I don't think so; the UK passed the Data Protection Act 2018 just 4 years ago, to bring GDPR into UK law. That is: the DPA is normal statute legislation, unlike the GDPR itself, which is a bureaucrat-made regulation. The DPA was passed by both houses of Parliament.
So what are these mysterious moves to ignore the law? The only such moves I'm aware of are some plans to remove the European Court of Human Rights from UK law (ain't gonna happen - the ECHR is written into the Good Friday Agreement), and the UK's decision to ignore the decision of the ICJ concerning the Chagos Islands.
If I understand this correctly, the issue isn't Google Analytics specifically, but "because it transfers users’ data to the USA, which is a country without an adequate level of data protection".
So this could also apply to any company that sends PII to the USA?
At present, there is no legal basis for a company covered by the GDPR to send personal data to the US or a US-owned company. The US needs to repeal the CLOUD Act, and maybe one or two other things, in order to make this situation work again.
What's really puzzling is that Google Analytics never got banned because of antitrust laws. It's the most obvious example of predatory pricing I've ever seen. How is a smaller company supposed to compete against a free product?
I co-founded a company called Heap that competed against Google Analytics and we were quite successful. Amplitude, Mixpanel, and others have also done so. GA’s free pricing was not really a big issue for us and customers were very willing to pay 6- and 7-figures for a differentiated quality product.
Loved Heap (Analytics?). I advocated for it while working at my previous employer :) I think we were early customers. At the time, its automatic tracking of all events was a godsend compared to hooking up specific tracking after the fact using GA events.
One broad view is that anti-trust is supposed to protect consumers, not competitors.
If a competitor can't produce a quality product that people will pay for, consumers aren't being harmed by the prevalence of a free good-enough product.
In a consumer-protection world where a free and open source Linux had 98% market share in the OS market, Microsoft or Apple would have no leg to stand on to sue its developers over anti-trust. In a competitor-protection world, they would.
The US views anti-trust through a very consumer-focused lens[1], the EU sometimes views it through a more competitor-focused one.
[1] This doesn't mean I agree with it, and there are obvious problems with trying to prove harm in a court of law, if no alternative exists.
Doesn’t predatory pricing mean “we dropped our pricing below profitability in order to kill competitors (and presumably raise our own prices once they’re dead)”?
I think you’d have a very good case against Amazon, and probably Uber/Lyft, and I’ve long wondered why no one sued them over it. But in Google’s case, Analytics is profitable for the same reason Youtube is profitable—Google makes money off the data they gather.
Google Analytics has an enterprise paid version and it starts at 6 figures, Adobe has a very competitive product in the same space. So there's definitively room for a paid product in the market.
It's like with Cloudflare. The free Tier is what gets small companies and hobby developers in. And as they know your system but not the one of others, they'll recommend it to use when your company grows or their employer looks for an analytics system.
But I don't think it's predatory. It clearly worked for cloudflare and seems to work for Tailscale (they openly said they're using the same strategy). It would be predatory if others couldn't match that, but I'd argue many competitors could offer free plans for small websites if they wanted to.
If we enforced a law that said no product can be sold at a loss, we would get rid of almost every single startup and many recently IPOd former unicorns,
There is really no reason to use Google Analytics anymore. There are many great alternatives now, mine is PanelBear.com. Other people love Fathom and Plausible. It’s great to see some unbundling happen.
Yeah, it was another one of those trojan horse programs. Offer something incredibly useful to website owners; something so compelling that they literally can't say no. An oh, it just happens to track the activity of every web user anywhere in the world.
The alternative offerings at the time were fairly awful compared to what google released.
This is consistent with decisions from the Austrian and French data protection authorities (DPAs). Note that Google is a Processor (for this product), meaning that Google itself does not violate GDPR, but only the websites that use it.
Following the Schrems II case, the "threat model" used by EU courts on these matters is "American law enforcement can serve a warrant to American companies." Long story short, any processing that Google does after collection is not considered to offer any protection, because American law enforcement can just tell them not to do that and they won't. Hence, the "Anonymize IP Address" setting in Google Analytics is not considered to have value for GA.
It might theoretically be possible to use GA compliantly by proxying data through an EU-owned service which obfuscates anything considered personal data, at minimum the IP address and various cookie values. This scenario hasn't been confirmed by anyone as compliant, but the regulators seem to always go out of their way to dance around it rather than just saying "GA is non-compliant, always, forever." Still, for the trouble to set up such a service you might as well just stand up a self-hosted first-party analytics solution.
This particular decision on GA is purely about the cross-border transfers, and doesn't seem to touch on whether using cookies for analytics requires consent. That's a separate issue (technically about a separate law).
> meaning that Google itself does not violate GDPR, but only the websites that use it.
This is so baffling to me. Google has subsidiaries in the EU. The fact that it's ok to give a product to a EU client which can't be used in accordance with the law, and the client is responsible, is just idiotic.
To be compliant, Google can just set up data centers specific to GA in one of those EU subsidiaries, so GA admins can choose to have their visitors' data stored only in an EU data center (and promise to not transfer that data to the US). This wouldn't be that hard to do.
Readit News
(We're tracking these cases on isgoogleanalyticsillegal.com along with details for each.)
Note that it's not illegal to use GA entirely, just illegal to use in its default state which transmits PII to the US.
Google should be the one doing the compliance work. If Italy bans some usage pattern in GA, it's Google that should make it impossible to configure it in non-conformant way.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
(God willing they repeal it, even if only for the international commerce implications...)
The title of this post and a lot of the comments are projecting what they want GDPR to be (all non european online entities banned from doing business in the EU) vs how its being enforced.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6366371?hl=en#zi...
As I mentioned in a sibling comment, this is technically true but complying with GDPR takes more than unchecking a few boxes. I've never seen any GA set-up that would remotely approach compliance. At minimum, you need to mask IP's before they reach Google, which means standing up a non-Google server to proxy all the hits. That is more complexity than 99+% of GA installations.
For many clients I have set up a cookie compliance tool like Onetrust, which blocks loading of GA and other scripts with one of the consent popups. With this combined configuration (and having verified nothing sneaks through before someone gives consent) most company legal / compliance teams I have worked with have deemed this to be a fully compliant setup. Of course, this might not be actually compliant, but the company legal team has done some research and arrived at this as the most advantageous position currently available.
I think using a compliance based tool like Onetrust also gives a sense of legal security in that if our configuration is properly set up they are advertising that we then get compliance as part of their service, and so responsibility of a violation could potentially be passed to them in a legal setting.
ref: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en
> The Dutch Data Protection Authority warns that the use of Google Analytics 'may soon no longer be allowed', after a ruling by the Austrian privacy regulator. A definitive conclusion is said to come at the beginning of 2022.
At least you removed "the only open source product analytics platform" and the Google fonts since the last time a Posthog employee posted it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994183
https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=DSB_(Austria_-_2021-0.586...
https://www.cnil.fr/en/use-google-analytics-and-data-transfe...
https://www.gpdp.it/web/guest/home/docweb/-/docweb-display/d...
https://noyb.eu/en/austrian-dsb-eu-us-data-transfers-google-...
NOYB is the primary source tracking these cases and generally was also responsible for filing the complaints that led to them. All the details are available from NOYB's GDPRhub wiki, https://gdprhub.eu. GDPRhub attempts to provide information on all the European DPAs including how to file complaints. At the least it provides contact info for all the DPAs and English translations of DPA decisions.
As stated in 13 Jan 2022 announcement on noyb.eu, these decisions are generally the result of the "Max Schrems II" decision. After that decision, Schrems filed 101 complaints to DPAs, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Note that the "legality" of Google Fonts, under the default configuration, is also in question. Arguably use of Google Fonts is even more widespread than use of Google Analytics.
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Processing of your users' personal data is legal only in the few exceptional scenarios outlined in Article 6.
https://gdprinfo.eu/en-article-6
All digital startups are literally doomed without the indiscriminate collection of personal tracking data.
Side note: thank you modern adtech for consistently recommending me products I already bought days and weeks before. Very effective. Gullible companies just keep paying cold hard cash for these garbage recommendation systems because some sales rep talks fluffy about AI and machine learning, it's so mindblowing....
Dead Comment
I run Simple Analytics [1], which is a privacy-first analytics business from the Netherlands. I see a lot of business from the EU just because we are from the EU as well.
[1] https://simpleanalytics.com/?ref=hn
If anything, EU startups could benefit from better control over the tools they use. One interesting halo effect of Google seeing that much data is also that US startup from ex-googlers get a head start on many insights.
These things have not been legal since the GDPR went into effect, and in some countries even before then.
If I had to chose an analytics software for a customer's website, I'd chose someone in EU for the sole reason that it would be compliant in both EU and the rest of the World.
It's unethical IMO to send personal data to countries that have weak privacy laws without making it absolutely clear to the user. Which is rarely the case with GA right now.
I switched most my projects to shynet, for me personally that's more than enough information and I have zero worries about tracking and know that some users appreciate my approach.
Edit:// even before GDPR became a thing I worked with several companies who had strict rules about hosting in Europe or even more explicit not hosting in the US.
"EU startups don't have to "catch up"..." then don't get surprised when EU talent is poached by US and Asian HRs for x2-x3 rates. And before you're gonna talk about all those "free" (taxpayer funded) services and how no European would ever move to Asia or NA, i'd like to remind you that we're in the remote work world now :)
Yes it doesn't solve the startup problem, but honestly there also also a ton of other laws and regulations outside of data protection which make it hard for startups to prosper. Web Analytics seems a relatively minor problem.
I self-host Plausible which is GDPR compliant and gives me all of the features that Google Analytics is actually good for. There is so much bloat in GA that provides absolutely no extra value.
I'm skeptical that this is a bad deal for EU citizens.
[EDIT] missing and
These laws also apply to US companies offering their services to in the EU. Frankly, it's about time American companies get reigned in on their privacy abuses. US startup culture has been playing fast and loose with people's data for far too long to disastrous effects.
I’ve been following the cases with regard to privacy in the EU and it’s a complete joke. You have all these onerous rules against any web technology making it near impossible for startups to function without an army of lawyers. Think I’m exaggerating? Look up the provisions under GDPR for any business, big or small, to set up a website and then process a single user request for their data even without sign in.
The UK is sick and tired of this and has recently begun moving to ignore these onerous rules. All power to them.
First: GDPR is a compromise, so it's a bit uneven. That's partly due to lobbying by google and friends. Second, privacy very much needs protection. Even if you are perfectly fine giving up your privacy, other people aren't. Third: you can actually process user requests. Depending on how you do it, you don't even have to show a banner. Is that really too intrusive?
I know, right. I mean obviously the world's most famous royal family (our British one) isn't really a monarchy so that doesn't count. And they certainly don't get previews and vetos on our laws, or given hundreds of millions from the licence fees for offshore wind farms, or own a notable percentage of the land.
As for GDPR, compliance is pretty straightforward provided you aren't being shady to begin with.
And the new UK proposals are much worse and if they go through as they stand will be a nightmare for anyone serving UK visitors.
I don't think so; the UK passed the Data Protection Act 2018 just 4 years ago, to bring GDPR into UK law. That is: the DPA is normal statute legislation, unlike the GDPR itself, which is a bureaucrat-made regulation. The DPA was passed by both houses of Parliament.
So what are these mysterious moves to ignore the law? The only such moves I'm aware of are some plans to remove the European Court of Human Rights from UK law (ain't gonna happen - the ECHR is written into the Good Friday Agreement), and the UK's decision to ignore the decision of the ICJ concerning the Chagos Islands.
It is illegal to use it in such a way that results in Personal Data being siphoned to the US.
Is it hard? Yes. Outright illegal? Nah.
So this could also apply to any company that sends PII to the USA?
If a competitor can't produce a quality product that people will pay for, consumers aren't being harmed by the prevalence of a free good-enough product.
In a consumer-protection world where a free and open source Linux had 98% market share in the OS market, Microsoft or Apple would have no leg to stand on to sue its developers over anti-trust. In a competitor-protection world, they would.
The US views anti-trust through a very consumer-focused lens[1], the EU sometimes views it through a more competitor-focused one.
[1] This doesn't mean I agree with it, and there are obvious problems with trying to prove harm in a court of law, if no alternative exists.
I think you’d have a very good case against Amazon, and probably Uber/Lyft, and I’ve long wondered why no one sued them over it. But in Google’s case, Analytics is profitable for the same reason Youtube is profitable—Google makes money off the data they gather.
If you can't beat the free offering, then go home.
- A French Ned Flanders, probably
In the real world of physical goods, there are laws against this. But Google's a tech company, so anything goes.
But I don't think it's predatory. It clearly worked for cloudflare and seems to work for Tailscale (they openly said they're using the same strategy). It would be predatory if others couldn't match that, but I'd argue many competitors could offer free plans for small websites if they wanted to.
The alternative offerings at the time were fairly awful compared to what google released.
A rough “how many came” is useful. At least to diagnose if the site had problems. Just talk to people and make your thing good!
Following the Schrems II case, the "threat model" used by EU courts on these matters is "American law enforcement can serve a warrant to American companies." Long story short, any processing that Google does after collection is not considered to offer any protection, because American law enforcement can just tell them not to do that and they won't. Hence, the "Anonymize IP Address" setting in Google Analytics is not considered to have value for GA.
It might theoretically be possible to use GA compliantly by proxying data through an EU-owned service which obfuscates anything considered personal data, at minimum the IP address and various cookie values. This scenario hasn't been confirmed by anyone as compliant, but the regulators seem to always go out of their way to dance around it rather than just saying "GA is non-compliant, always, forever." Still, for the trouble to set up such a service you might as well just stand up a self-hosted first-party analytics solution.
This particular decision on GA is purely about the cross-border transfers, and doesn't seem to touch on whether using cookies for analytics requires consent. That's a separate issue (technically about a separate law).
This is so baffling to me. Google has subsidiaries in the EU. The fact that it's ok to give a product to a EU client which can't be used in accordance with the law, and the client is responsible, is just idiotic.