So tomorrow, the new GDPR privacy regulation takes effect in the European Economic Area. This is a very good thing and I'm thrilled about it, but it does appear that thanks to how Google Analytics works (persistent individual cookie identifiers that Google also uses for ad targeting etc.), it is probably about to become illegal unless you make the user explicitly consent to having their data collected.

For most websites, this is going to mean they add an annoying popup asking you to agree to your data being shared with Google. I think this is silly and annoying, and that absolutely nobody in the world has any reason to go out of their way to agree to let Google know they visited this Pokémon website. All I've ever used Google Analytics for is satisfying my personal curiosity about some statistics and aggregates, which would become sort of pointless when only people who can be bothered to agree to a ridiculous popup are included in the aggregate data anyway. So instead, I've just ditched Google Analytics. Maybe I'll find some kind of server-side analytics solution that does not have any weird privacy implications to satisfy my thirst for statistics later.

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