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Comment by granzymes | Hacker News Reader

This is happening over concerns that the US government could require Google to hand over data, but the EU and the US are reasonable actors who realize that data sharing between the continents is necessary for free trade and are incentivized to come up with a solution. Doubtful this ends up mattering.

Case in point, the article acknowledges the new Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework (https://cdp.cooley.com/european-commission-approves-trans-at...) signed in December which will (attempt to) cure the deficiencies under the current agreement. You should expect that the EU and the US will keep pumping these out until one of them sticks.

No one is going to ban Google Analytics, and the fact that this article was written by a competitor did not go unnoticed.

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Isn't it already banned in these 5 countries, or the ban isn't being followed? https://www.isgoogleanalyticsillegal.com

Privacy Shield was invalidated in 2020, which didn't make Google Analytics illegal but increased the burden of implementing it. If you aren't making use of more advanced features, you could be non-compliant. That site is, hilariously, also a product of a Google Analytics competitor.

The new Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework replaces Privacy Shield and so for the moment out of the box Google Analytics is fine again. This is what I meant by my comment above. The US and the EU will find a way to make data sharing work, no matter how many agreements it takes.

“This new [framework] is very closely modelled on the old [framework], isn’t it?” That is, the CJEU says that people ought to be able to sue the host country regarding their privacy rights, the US says no way foreigners have privacy rights (that they can sue the US over, in something that is actually part of the judiciary), US and EU diplomats set up some sort of agreement and announce it loudly, privacy activists sue, half a dozen years pass, the CJEU says the agreement hasn’t actually fixed anything about the US system, rinse and repeat for the last two decades. This is starting to seem like a deliberate stall, honestly, and I’m not sure how it could be prevented.

It is already banned in Austria, France, Italy and recently Denmark and this is only rolling further.

> No one is going to ban Google Analytics. The fact that this article was written by a competitor did not go unnoticed.

It is already non-compliant with the GDPR according to EU data privacy regulators for precisely that reason after the Austrian data privacy regulator declared it illegal. I had customers scrambling to remove google analytics because they feared visitors/lawyers suing them for that GDPR violation. Also fines up to 4% of the concerns world wide sales volume might not be a joke to your company.

So yeah technically nobody is going to ban google analytics, because they already did..

You should tell your clients that there are still compliant ways to integrate Google Analytics even assuming the new legal framework doesn't stick.

But the Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework was signed in December, so the current GDPR rulings are a moot point since those were about Privacy Shield. Should take another few years to find out what the courts think of the latest agreement. Eventually one of them will work.

And NOYB is already preparing to take it down, like it did with previous agreement.

https://noyb.eu/en/open-letter-future-eu-us-data-transfers

I just dont understand why would you dangle left and right with your businesses.

Why don't you just set up a local analytics (there are bunch of oss alternatives) and get rid of google analytics?

Also I don't get it. People sometimes seemed to be obsessed by analytics that much they forget making their website. And then replace doing the real work with decisions by numbers they get out of "Analytics".

And all that on the cost of the privacy of the customer. Often only for negative gain.

What I tell my clients is that it is their responsibility to care about their customer's data and that I as a customer certainly feel better about brands that treat me well.

I doubt one of them will really work. The US and EU have a very different concept of privacy. Not just for government espionage (US citizens have good protection but everyone else is fair game) but also for commercial purposes. For us in the EU everything should be opt-in, a bit like Apple does on iOS but Google refuses to implement on Android.

It's really telling that the politicians have no recourse but to try the same thing over and over again instead of just coming up with a real solution. There probably isn't one.

alternatively you could also tell your clients about how costly that is, which cheaper and more user-friendly alternatives exists.

also if you stop using analytics and do this right, you gain performance and visits and keep your site on the right track. but that's an art, not a product to sell, sorry.

"No one is going to ban Google Analytics" -- no need to explicitly ban individual products, the rules are written down in GDPR

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