>which is the only way they make money other than ads.

Yeah.

> So, you use the site resources

Yeah.

>don't see ads

Yeah.

> don't add to their user/page view numbers.

Yeah.

>Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to analyze UI/price sensitivity/promos/etc

Yeah.

Well you know what ? I wouldn't be doing this if ads provider didn't abuse my trust and displayed popup ads. I wouldn't be doing this if ads were actually targeted (lol jk). Early ads providers fucked it up for everyone. Not only do I hate the very principle of ads, I go out of my way to avoid them.

And most of all, I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't Google Analytics. Use piwik, use whatever you want as long as it's selfhosted and doesn't report to <gigantic database of users> and I will allow it. After all, I have no way of knowing if you're selling my data back anyways. It's my computer, I pick what I want to display and which code I want to execute. You want stats ? Use your own server.

  By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor.

Well too bad. Maybe they should take the radical step of actually looking at their server logs.

>blocking GA may break your ability to actually use the site at all (many travel sites, for instance).

What? How does that even work? If GA goes down, their site just stops working until it's back up?

Too bad for them. They should use same-domain analytics instead. Otherwise they have no chance with me.

It's not like GA is the only way to gather statistics, there are other vendors and even the access logs for your server itself.

I'm not willing to let Google follow me everywhere on the internet and if that is detrimental to the sites I visit then they are welcome to block me if they detect that I'm blocking GA.

There is a very good reason why GA is free to use. It involves building profiles of your users for Google's benefit. Don't be surprised or upset if some of your users don't want to participate in that privacy shit storm.

Many sites? I've been blocking GA through ghostery for years and haven't had any problem ever. Only problem with Ghostery i've noticed is blocking Adobe Typekit and some other UI-framework i can't remember the name of, and that is extreeemly rare. Besides, as many others have said, if a site is stupid enough to rely on a third party server for analytics that is their problem, not mine, there are plenty of good analytics alternatives that can be hosted by yourself easily, and there are plenty of good websites out there that i can visit instead if one is not working without GA.

Sounds like those sites need a better architecture if those things are so strategic to their business.