Google Analytics is bad

If you are launching a new website and you want to know how many users visit it, Google Analytics is probably the first thing someone would tell you to install.

I also installed Google Analytics many times on the sites I worked on. Not that I particularly liked GA. I used it because it was free and a recognizable brand. In fact, I don’t really like the Google company because of their unethical practices of using users’ data in all sorts of ways to make money and “stealing” content from website creators to train their AI models. Maybe you feel the same way.

Recently, I worked on a website for a client (I’m a full-time developer). They asked me to add some basic analytics to these websites. As it was a European company, the condition was that it had to comply with EU privacy regulations. Besides, it was supposed to be something for the average person who doesn’t have time to look through complicated reports and learn how to use complicated tools.

And that’s where the problems began. It’s true that in the hands of an experienced marketer, Google Analytics (GA) is a powerful tool. But with that power comes complexity, bloat, and serious privacy tradeoffs. It quickly turned out that there were quite a few of them:

• It’s bloated and invasive
  GA loads multiple scripts, sets cookies, and sends tons of data to Google servers. This slows down sites and puts user privacy at risk.

• It’s complex
  GA’s interface can feel like an airplane cockpit. You just want to know how many people visited your site, but instead, you’re clicking through five menus trying to find the right report. It’s a waste of time.

• It causes privacy issues
  Due to privacy regulations like GDPR, CCPA and PECR, using GA without explicit consent is legally risky in many countries. In fact, some EU regulators have outright banned it.

• You’re the product
  Let’s not forget that Google Analytics exists to feed Google’s ad empire. It’s free because our data fuels their targeting engine. Google practically owns your data.

• It isn’t accurate
  Most ad blockers and privacy-focused browsers block Google Analytics by default. That includes uBlock, Brave, Firefox with tracking protection, and a bunch of browser extensions. Various studies show it’s about 20% of internet users.

• It slows down sites
  The GA script (gtag.js or analytics.js, depending on version) is surprisingly heavy – it’s 40-70 KB total just to track pageviews. This puts a significant strain on the site’s loading speed.

• It isn’t real-time
  Google Analytics can take up to 24 hours to process your data. There’s a 30-minute “real-time” tab, but it’s extremely limited and often doesn’t match the actual numbers that show up later.

I decided to look for alternative solutions. There are of course some simple analytics tools, such as Matomo, Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Umami and a few others. But they are either too simple or too complex, slow or buggy or inaccurate or too expensive, or they didn’t let me export my data, or they have an outdated/ugly UI, etc.

Of course, some of them are quite good alternatives to GA and have a large number of users. Perhaps you are using one of them and you’re satisfied. But I couldn’t find anything that would 100% meet my needs.

So I came up with an idea to build my own tool. Something like Google Analytics, but stripped down to what is really needed. Just a simple, easy, fast, and open-sourced analytics tool for everyone.

I’m working on this project in my free time. It will be some time before I make it publicly available. I don’t know how long yet.

Update: I’ve launched the app in public

— by Tom Antok