[BNM] Piwik Vs Google Analytics

[Danny Hope]

2009/4/2 Andy Smith <andy.bnm at zambezi.org.uk>:
> As well as any technical differences and differences in the
> information they provide, you might want to consider your visitors'
> privacy. From that perspective Piwik is better than Google Analytics,
> or in general anything where you keep control of the data is better
> than a service where you pass data to a third party.
>
> Google's terms of service are quite broad so it's hard to tell what
> they do with the data they collect, but I suspect it includes things
> that some of your visitors might object to. It would be possible in
> principle for Google to track which of your visitors have been to
> other sites using Google Analytics, and how they have used other
> Google services.
>
> If you keep control of the data you can violate your visitors' privacy
> as much or as little as you like, although presumably you don't have
> anywhere near as much information about them as Google does.

It's an interesting point, I hadn't considered people's privacy in this way.

Do you consider Google's decisions around people's private date as a
responsibility of site owners?

In other words, if I use Google Analytics on a site and then Google
decide to do something nasty with visitors' data, is that something
for which I should take partial blame?

On another note, how would you feel about a site's statistics being
completely open, for anyone to see? I've been thinking allowing
completely open access to Google Analytics and Piwik results for the
UX Brighton site, thus enabling people to do a side-by-side comparison
of the two systems. Is this something visitors should be warned about?
Is it just the right of any 'webmaster' to do that?

-- 
Danny Hope
07595 226 792
@yandle