GA gives Google surveillance over a large portion of the web. Even if the author of a webpage trusts google with their data, they shouldn't be forcing their opinion of Google on others. Trust isn't transitive!
Google receiving browsing histories for a single website is rude, but it probably isn't a serious problem for many websites (although the risk will depend on the nature of the website). In isolation, the fact that Alice read Bob's webpage isn't isn't very interesting, but Google can aggregate that data into s very accurate pattern of life[1].
> Is it not anonymised?
Not for any meaningful definition of "anonyms". At best GA will zero the low 8 bits of the IP address by request of the website. (The opinion of the person visiting the website apparently isn't worth considering) See this[2] post for a more detailed explanation of GA's perfunctory "Anonymize IP" feature.
Google receiving browsing histories for a single website is rude, but it probably isn't a serious problem for many websites (although the risk will depend on the nature of the website). In isolation, the fact that Alice read Bob's webpage isn't isn't very interesting, but Google can aggregate that data into s very accurate pattern of life[1].
> Is it not anonymised?
Not for any meaningful definition of "anonyms". At best GA will zero the low 8 bits of the IP address by request of the website. (The opinion of the person visiting the website apparently isn't worth considering) See this[2] post for a more detailed explanation of GA's perfunctory "Anonymize IP" feature.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15167059