Google Wants Your Analytics Data Badly (An Open Letter)

Dear Google,

It would be more un-evil if you would make it easier to opt out of that new data sharing “feature” (your word) that you recently added to Google Analytics. I tend to be much more forgiving of you than some of my friends, so please let me share a few suggestions.

Let’s start with this screen, the one I see when I login to an existing Google Analytics account:

You give me a nice, big “ACCEPT” button … so how about adding an equally big “NO, THANKS” button? As it stands now, it’s like I don’t have a choice but to accept. Well, I do have a choice, but it’s just a small text link a couple inches to the right of the call to action, buried in between two other links that make my eyes glaze over. Not good.

Secondly, when I’m making a new account for my wife, I stumbled on this:

Two suggestions: Make the data sharing stuff a little bigger so I don’t almost miss it, and don’t opt me in by default! What’s up with that? You’re like those awful sites that force me to uncheck a box so I don’t agree to be spammed halfway to tomorrow. Thankfully, I noticed the little “Edit Settings” link and took care of this. (Matt McGee, FTW!)

I prefer to help rather than scold, so here’s how this data sharing thing should be implemented:

There you go — just a few suggestions. If the whole data sharing thing is as benign as you say it is, there’s no need to hide the opt-out buttons, right?

Kind regards,
Matt McGee