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Comment by Luc | Hacker News Reader

I have read through the comments on Techcrunch, and I don't think anyone there gets it - unless I am the one with the misunderstanding.

Installing Google Analytics on a website allows Google to track users visiting the site. Can Google not follow this same user across different GA-enabled sites (e.g. through a cookie)? And can Google not connect this user with search terms entered on its website? If that is the case, that seems to be a significant amount of data that would potentially fall foul of European privacy laws.

The commenters on Techcrunch, however, seem to think the issue is with the users of Google Analytics (the web site operators) gaining private data. It isn't. It's with Google getting this data.

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Analytics sets it's cookie under the site's domain name, so it is not available to other GA-enabled sites.

edit: whoops, I misunderstood your question

I'd think it's not really a cookie being available for use on another site at issue. It's that site visit data is collected in a central location (Google) and is potentially available for data mining.

what he means is that Google puts together all the data from Google Analytics enabled sites, to put together a huge picture.

it's not the sites gaining the info, it's Google

I don't think that's what the Germans are worried about (though it's what most commenters on Techcrunch think they are worried about). I think it's about Google having access to this data, and being able to link visits and search terms - not the users of Google Analytics.

The main criticisms are that GA collect users' data without consent, without telling them what they collect and without giving them a simple way to get their data reliably deleted, all of which are forbidden according to german law. And before people start complaining that GA doens't collect personal information: there seems to be an emerging legal consensus in germany that an IP address is in fact a personally identifiable information. Nobody has ever been taken to court for running an apache with the default logging configuration, but there are people who think that that is an offence worth a fine of up to €50.000,-- too, just like running GA.

For those who can read german, here is a better text: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Bundesdatenschutzbeaf...

And soon this will be the way the whole EU works. And then the advertising market will collapse there and maybe they'll decide to come up with privacy laws that make sense...

Not EU, this is how Europe works (certain parts of it at least, and certainly where I live). There is a certain political culture in european states that causes a sense of unease when anything of no trivial size is not "regulated". The "regulation" instinct is almost theological, it does not stem from problems or desired results or policies. When something important is not "regulated" somehow, it is perceived as potentially dangerous.

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