This. We use a non-Google analytics product that we could even move to self-hosting if needed. But the marketing director basically was like “This is better than GA, and I will use it for almost everything, but we have to have GA also because it shows as conversions.”

I sure hope so

From a first look it seems like the subscription requires to use that service in a EU-only fashion costs at least 200$. While this seems like a good option for large and medium size companies, I fear that this pricing leaves out all small companies that may not require 50k solved captchas a month but may require EU-based hosting nonetheless.

Google search seemed to work fine before that stuff was tracked.

*according to Google.

I spend 5 minutes on american recipe websites to scroll through the SEO bullshit before finding the actual recipe, but that doesn't mean it's useful.

So, no, it's just Google telling you to let them collect analytics on every aspect of your life for "search improvement purposes".

also the worse the search results will get if someone put a bunch of ads in before the search results for people to click on instead of the search results.

It's run by Intuition Machines, Inc. which seems to be incorporated in California. That fact alone disqualifies it.