Much ado about nothing

When the chief public-relation officer runs into your office in the early morning, and breathlessly asks whether the use of Google Analytics may render the company liable for prosecution, you know that something very weird has happened.

As it turned out, a character named Caspar seems to be on a personal crusade against the Google empire since quite some time. Last week, this individual theatrically announced the end of his negotiations with Google and threatened to sue individuals and enterprises alike for the use of Google Analytics, the root of all evil. Hysterical, isn't it? 8)

All this fuzz came to an abrupt stop when Caspar's homepage was discovered to make use of tracking code as well (his page at the University of Hamburg, which is also down, used Google Analytics).

While this little breeze in a teapot provided a welcome distraction from the daily routine, it also attracted my attention to Google Analytics. Since I'm born with a natural tendency towards statistics, and learned to be fond of pretty graphs, I quite like what I see there. Because of that, but partly also in response to the Google phobia fostered in this country, I decided to give Google Analytics a closer look. See the Impressum for further details.

Two more things:

• When asking for privacy, don't cry for the big brother. It's up to you.
• Going for a witch hunt while ignoring the actual problems hurts the cause.