Goodbye Google Analytics, you won't be missed

In November 2018 I added Google Analytics to gain some aggregated insights about the traffic on this website; I did disable everything intrusive I could (no gender, age, etc. reports for me), but never actually loved the idea of having Google cookies associated with something I do.

While I’ve always been pretty straighforward with the cookie-consent message (This website uses Google Analytics. I’m only interested in aggregated traffic informations and on my side nothing creepy will derive from that knowledge. If you don’t consent to cookies, please leave this website and, possibly, the whole Internet, or Google (ironic, uh?) a way to block cookies.) and sarcastic with the Got it, thanks EU! button to dismiss it, I’m very happy to announce that this site is now Google, cookie, and cookie-consent free.

Following the lead of my friend Chris, I’ve just switched to CloudFlare Analytics, which only provides aggregated, user-first and privacy focused anonymous informations; I always only cared about page views, which is basically most of what CloudFlare is providing and now it’s all I got from a company that actually has a good track record and no involvement in advertising (they also give you device groups and countries of origin, but I find that of no interest).

Bonus points, Safari’s “shield” is now happy because my website does not contact any tracker.

I’ve also just requested the deletion of my Google Analytics “property”, which will be completed in 35 days, without even looking at it one last time or downloading it. Which tells you a lot about how much I really care about those data…

If you have a website, I encourage you to look into CloudFlare’s solution, the blog post I linked above is a good starting point, as it describes how they accomplish analytics without cookies or fingerprinting.