[notnarb]

> Recognizes common JavaScript libraries and redirects each to a canonical URL.

> Inserts Google Analytics javascript snippet.

While these are useful (and what appears to be optional) features, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to think that a business reason for Google to support this library could be to lower the barrier of entry for developers to allow Google to track their users.

[nikolay]

Both are optional. In fact, the canonical library is a shell script that you need to run, it has library signatures (hashes) and their URLs. You can fully customize it. The GA option is turned off by default and you need to specify your tracking ID anyway.

[zongitsrinzler]

I would argue that adding a Google Analytics JS snippet is the easiest thing possible for an average user while adding an Nginx plugin is infinitely more difficult.

[de_dave]

In most cases yes. I have a feeling there's a customer somewhere running an old CMS or has a big jungle of HTML documents but not the resources to modify them all accordingly.

[nikolay]

Yes, this is one the main utilities of PageSpeed - you can optimize and tweak content on pages on which you don't have control over.

[random_rr]

You know that inserting a Google Analytics tracking script is a.) one of the most common things a web developer does anyways and b.) a very helpful and common-sense feature coming from a Google product?

[josteink]

> You know that inserting a Google Analytics tracking script is a.) one of the most common things a web developer does anyways and b.) a very helpful and common-sense feature coming from a Google product?

Not at all. I realize Google by having dominant search-engine marketshare and obfuscating their search-terms from their referrer url makes visitor analysis literally impossible without joining the Google Analytics dragnet, but that doesn't mean that everyone is willing to do so, nor that they will do it every time. It may in fact be illegal for one to do so.

One example would be doing business with local government agencies and having to comply with EU data-locality rules. Will adding Google analytics to my site violate those rules? I don't know. But I know I wouldn't risk me being in compliance or not up to chance. Automatically adding third party US-based user-tracking to my service certainly doesn't sound very compliant.

Another example would be if you already have concrete TOS with your customer-base which does not include leaking customer data to a unrelated third party, and especially if you deliver on site software to buying customers. If I bought some software, deployed it on my network and then discovered it was spying on me and reporting everything I did to google, I would be pretty pissed off.

Adding it automatically to my product "out of the box" for a completely unrelated service (nginx optimizations) is akin to drive-by installers of the Windows desktop-age.

You know what they say about ducks: If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

This looks like spyware, deploys like spyware and behaves like spyware. I think it's safe to call it spyware.

Google: Remember that thing about not being evil? Yeah, let's get back to that.

[true_religion]

> ... makes visitor analysis literally impossible without joining the Google Analytics dragnet,

Google Analytics does not give you referrer information from Google search. They keep that to themselves regardless of if you use their analytics software or not.

The only things they do is (a) integrate with webmaster tools which you can use without Google Analytics to give you general search term aggregates and (b) integrate with Google Ads to show your campaign performance, which any other analytics service can do as well.

[TheLogothete]

Google analytics offers nothing more than the rest of the analytics providers. In fact, it offers less than most of them.

[sam_goody]

To whom?

Google collects a lot of data. Combined with the size of the aggregated net, it is more intrusive than anything else out there.

However, they only share a subset of that with the site owner, who is no more than their tool.

Use Snowplow or Piwik, or a bajillion paid competitors, and stop giving up your users' privacy.

[mseebach]

Something can be good for a corporation you don't like AND good for the world at the same time, without any implied tradeoffs or dichotomies.

Yes, Google is betting heavily on web-everything-all-the-time because they know how to monitise the web (and their competitor don't). Making the web better furthers this goal, but it also makes the web better, so there's that.

When we start seeing things that will break/degrade the web for apps and users that aren't in the Google (ad/tracking) garden, that's when we start to worry, but there's been very little, if any, of that.

[cbr]

> there's been very little, if any, of that

Is there anything PageSpeed is doing that you see this way? Because that's really not what we want to happen!

[mseebach]

No, I was referring to Google in general. PageSpeed seems perfectly benign.