[stefan_]

Segment sounds like the kinda business that should presumably just serve up 403 errors for all EU traffic. Data laundering analytics to 300 external tools is shitting on the GDPR.

(Remember this when reading the article: all the traffic, all the VMs, all the megadollars spent on AWS here are doing nothing but tunnel (replicate) analytics data to third-parties, all of whom would be perfectly happy to receive it directly. It is the definition of waste.)

[patio11]

Among other reasons to architect it this way, having the client (web browser) connect to each analytics provider directly pushes the work to the least reliable, most network-constrained, and least manageable node in the network. Segment lets you have the client do de minimis work and have the heavy duty transfer (and retries, etc) happen from somewhere in AWS, where they're not connected over a 3G connection. That isn't waste, contingent on the company or the user getting value out of analytics and analytics-driven decisionmaking, which is quite plausible.

[cellularmitosis]

not to mention that many businesses have multiple client platforms (web, iOS, android, etc), so implementing anything client-side immediately multiplies the dev spend.