With most of my customers the conversation goes something like:
- Customer: We must still implement that cookie popup before launch!
- Me: No. You don't have to. If we just disable SomePerformanceMetrics and GoogleAnalytics, we're done: we don't need a pupop.
- Me: who is using the performance metrics ATM? And who is acting on GA? How do you use them? Would this (shows three really neat Log-analyzers as alternative) suffice?
- Customer: We don't use them yet. But we might want to in future. And we then we might need all that data. So we want to start collecting it now.
Point is: you don't need Google Analytics, you don't need any of those 20+ tracking cookies if you actually look at it.
But there's a lot a FOMO, combined with "but this is how we have always done it, so shut up".
There are some rare cases where GA, new-relic, tagmanager etc are really nessecary and none of the privacy-friendly (ie no-cookie-popup required) alternatives cut it. But those are rare.
I daresay that a vast majority of tracking cookies is just there because the developers/business is too lazy to take a serious look at the problem.
Which is why I truly welcome more legislation that turns "collecting vast amounts of data" from "free" into a real and looming liability.
