Because it would be impossible for Google to do any kind of serious server side analysis of the data, which is why these companies use analytics, if Google don't have the data unencrypted.
I worked on apps where the data collected was completely empty of user-identifying information. Management seemed content with merely logging clicks from within the UI, seeing how (and how many) people used the app.
Sadly I think there is a trend in our industry to gather everything, decide what you actually want/need later.
I think Google (and related) are to blame for enabling this kind of "data hoovering". Giving the customer what they want at the expense of us the users is getting kinda evil.
The terms of service of Google Analytics specifically prohibit storing PII in it. "You will not and will not assist or permit any third party to pass information, hashed or otherwise, to Google that Google could use or recognize as personally identifiable information"
And that level of insight only works for small companies - at a certain point you want to combine analytics from your UI with things like “is this a high value customer” or “did this customer stop using the app after experiencing this frustrating UX”
I think you can say it's "anonymous" data in that it doesn't have name/phone/email but still be relatively fingerprint-able given additional analytics data.
I'm still not convinced how this is "bad" per se. Yet we're all here discussing this as if it's already decided that this data shouldn't be shared and I'm sitting here thinking "Wtf? Who asked me?". Ok, so the Tax firm I gave my personal info to put it on Google, okay. Will google see it? Sure. Is it on some DB on google? Sure.
Do I care? No.
We're watching the world burn right now with more pressing issues, and this whole thing seems so ridiculously academic and contrived.
Same here, this type of outrage bait doesn’t work on me either. Some income info on me is in Intuit’s database somewhere, it hypothetically maybe being in a database at Meta does not affect me at all, other than I might get ads for more luxury goods. I don’t care, I also click “allow” instead of “Ask App Not To Track” in every iOS pop-up scare message.
Sadly I think there is a trend in our industry to gather everything, decide what you actually want/need later.
I think Google (and related) are to blame for enabling this kind of "data hoovering". Giving the customer what they want at the expense of us the users is getting kinda evil.