"Critical?" No. But it was built by a publicly traded media company, so they're probably interested in promoting it and making money with it.

Google Analytics can give a lot of insights to the webmaster about how a site is being used. The others? Meh.

I contract for a media company that handles (and cleanses) PII (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personally_identifiable_inform...). We take this information very seriously. We could give a shit about who you are, we just want you to become the same anonymous number for tracking reasons. Why is this such a big deal? AT WORST you'd get ads actually targeted to your interests instead of bullshit ads you can't click through (see: YouTube). Perhaps I'm sort of less sensitive to this since my first name and last name is a primary key to me (there is nobody else with my name combo on the planet, meaning I'm horribly googleable already).