You spoke with a support agent who is checking the status of your AdSense campaign. That system has flagged links on your website as 'malicious'. The agent is simply telling you the links are 'not allowed' because the system has flagged them. Ie. you're not allowed to run AdSense on a site with flagged links.
I'm 99% sure this has nothing do with you using a GA alternative.
Well, if the system flagged it as such, then clearly the fault lies with the user! /s
As mentioned in the thread, this is a pre-existing issue going back to 2019. Google had previously claimed to have 'fixed it'.
When did software companies become able to routinely explain away their mistakes (or obfuscate their skullduggery) as unintentional mishaps made by their computerized checklists?
Are we really going to blame it on the user when these megacorps have huge lobbying campaigns that allows for legislators to turn a blind eye? Monopoly laws are support to prevent exactly that, yet it seems that they are less and less applied to megacorps.
Of course the support agent has no agency, but it's not like Adam can appeal to a higher authority. Thus, for him, he truly cannot advertise on Google while using Matomo. The effect is real, regardless of whether it was intentional.
Yes, they clearly are reading too much into it. The title of this thread isn't "Adam cannot advertise on Google while using Matomo". It is making a much more widely scoped claim on multiple axes, which seems to be based purely on this interaction with a support agent.
Edit: the HN title was edited to be more accurate (thanks!), so the criticism below no longer applies.
If you're going to make a claim about there being a pattern, like the OP very confidently did in the title, you can't just generalize from one example. There needs to be at least some token effort put into establishing that the pattern is real. Otherwise it's dishonest click-bait.
There are dozens, probably hundreds, of different web analytics tools. Are users of those having similar problems, preferably at a meaningful scale? No? Then maybe you shouldn't be implying that there is some kind of a policy against non-GA web analytics software.
This is the same Google that keeps "accidentally" breaking various apps for Firefox, and fixing them several months later? [1] At best I can believe that fixing it was intentionally deprioritized.
As a FF user, I just presume they have done things right and they are being sabotaged, or at best not even tested, until I can find a bug to the contrary at this point. But they have won even with me to some extent. I have Chromium installed because otherwise I would not be able to do several important tasks a month, due to this technical gaslighting on sites I can't avoid.
This is different because Google makes money from AdSense. Like all of it.
The guy is trying to run AdSense campaigns. AdSense runs on what, millions, billions of websites. It has presumably very complicated system for detecting malicious links. An alternative Analytics solution has, at least for OP, been caught in this filter.
I don't think it's likely that Google is scheming to sabotage analytics competitors by blocking their customers AdSense campaigns.
> At best I can believe that fixing it was intentionally deprioritized.
Firefox is (depending how you measure it) 3-7% of the total browser market...if you have a bug that impacts Chrome and a bug that impacts Firefox and have to pick one, it's pretty obvious which one you're going for.
Impact and frequency are both important. The fact that audio of Firefox users is often intelligle in google meet should be higher priority than e.g. a button is misaligned in chrome.
> I'm 99% sure this has nothing do with you using a GA alternative.
What am I missing here? To me this seems like precisely what is happening. The OP cannot use AdSense because his Matomo integration was flagged as "malicious" (even though presumably using GA to achieve similar functionality would be allowed).
Sure, this may not be an official public move by Google to try and stamp out competition, but to the creators and users of stuff like Matomo, that makes little different since the outcome is still the same. The problem is made even worse in this case since you would expect that an (apparent) false-positive in their auto-scan could be cleared up by contacting support. When support's answer is "this is not allowed" it seems like an appropriate time to start talking to lawyers....
Reading too much into it because it's not blocking "Google Analytics competitors" it's blocking that specific one, probably an error with their flagging system. There are plenty of other analytics competitors that run just fine and don't get flagged.
This is a support person with no agency, the real problem is this can't really be escalated and fixed - that's the big downfall Google doesn't want to fix because it would be too much work.
> the real problem is this can't really be escalated and fixed
Sure, this is definitely a systemic issue when it comes to these mega-tech-corps. Agreed.
But it seems like you are insinuating that Google's AI blocking Matomo is not a "real problem". For the creators/users of Matomo (or whatever the next service is that is "accidentally" flagged) it seems to make little difference if this is an "error with their flagging system". To the AI, a false positive and a true positive are exactly the same. Any AI mistake is a problem. Sometimes it is a small problem that falls within a margin of error. But, when your website is blocked from the literal online ad monopoly that is AdSense for a "false-positive" and support will not help you, that is a real problem. Google does not get a pass here becuase "the [AI] gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." (Gen 3:12)
I don't think it's fair to say people are reading too much into it. It's a Google decision to not empower their support staff. It's a Google decision to let some automated checker flag their competitor and de facto force users to switch to their own platform. It's a Google decision to not care about such issues even after being aware of them for years.
I don't see how fixing a flag would be too much work. What I do see is having to deal with customer support when somebody comes in and says, "Matomo says you are charging me for clicks that I'm not getting." That could turn into a real headache, even in the most honest or best-intentioned cases.
It's fair to think "dont be evil" Google would not and it was flagged erroneously. Yet history shows this has been an issue since 2019 and was said to be resolved in 2020. Though apparently not (or it was rolled back).
Though to be clear the "not allowed" was a response to the reply that it was links to a Google Analystics Competitor. That may well be down to further training being required but the opportunity was given to clarify and not taken.
In the general sense, the intent may not have been malign but the system needs fixing regardless of Google's intent.
I mean you're writing with a chat support agent. Presumably, you're not spending remotely enough money to even be communicating with an agent who is hired by google.
Support people are busy, dealing with all kinds of bullshit, with very little time.
Frankly I think it's a bit of dick move that you censored your website but didn't bother censoring the guys name.
I think the question is what the reason is for flagging these links as malicious, and is there a rule that automatically whitelists Google-owned domains from this blacklisting?
Since I imagine what happened is that some heuristics identified the analytics code as malicious and it got blocked, do we also have an example of Google misidentifying their own tracking technology and marking it the same way?
If not, I would say that's where the anti-competitive behaviour lies, anything Google automatically becomes whitelisted by their systems while competitors have to be careful and keep checking that they are not incorrectly flagged.
PS. I don't actually think the behaviour here is inherently malicious, it's likely a mistake that will be quickly corrected, but it highlights the problems of one company owning the entire ecosystem and the hurdles competitors have to jump through.
It's not a stretch to imagine Google being able to test their own products and how they interact with each other better than others. Which in and of itself may be considered unfair.
I am inclined to agree with you, but playing devils advocate, there really isn't anything to stop google from going full crazy and really blocking people. That's the disconcerting thing for me.
Clearly Google was kind enough to identify the adtracking as a type of privacy-hostile malware. Now, if only they could extend the courtesy to the horror show that is Google Analytics.
This is the correct take. As a software developer I recognize the value in understanding the usage patterns for the software you develop, but good grief we have gone off the deep end in the analytics/tracking pool...
Was this real traffic though? Google Analytics had a massive spam referral problem in 2014, maybe earlier as well [0]
"The problem of fake references in Google Analytics has changed significantly over the past few years. In 2014, we had some bots from semalt and buttons-for-website that visited your website and left fake referrals in your analytics. In December 2014, the attacks began taking advantage of a weakness in Google’s new Measurement Protocol that allowed direct attacks on the Google Analytics tracking servers without having to actually visit your website. This is a lot easier than crawling the web looking for new websites. "
However these stories involving some mega corp as an evil actor always raise the question: what's to be gained, and what's the risk.
As soon as some manager instructs someone beneath them to do bad stuff, some kind of trail exists. The downside to mega corp is enormous if that comes to light.
Imagine if Google is caught in the act of pulling some shady shit like that. The law suits, loss of trust and prestige. The personal exposure to the individuals involved.
All it takes is for some underling to pop up with a smoking gun email, a recorded conversation on their IPhone, a receipt from a shady transaction. Then it's immense risk and a big cover up needed to try and save things.
I don't doubt that shady shit happens, passed down the chain Mafia boss style so there's no paper trail, even at Google.
But does that lead to actual dodgy acts like prioritizing AdSense customers in search results?
How many engineers would need to be brought along for the ride for that to happen? How many of them are potential whistle blowers?
For all of these reasons (and perhaps naively) I like to think that corporate corruption is not this overt.
Tldr; I hope you were mistaken and it was purely a coincidence.
> Imagine if Google is caught in the act of pulling some shady shit like that. The law suits, loss of trust and prestige.
Easily brushed away, quickly forgotten.
> The personal exposure to the individuals involved.
Virtually nonexistent.
To pick an example, Google colluded with other tech companies to limit the salaries of its engineers, yet here you are claiming it couldn’t possibly happen.
Do a search for “corporate malfeasance” and see the truly monstrous acts committed by companies that continue to do business quite successfully.
I have not implied that Google tried to be evil. It was just a very interesting observation (which I unfortunately did not experiment around longer, by removing ads again, etc.).
Risk is too high for such things to be decided, but maybe someone buried a change in the second decimal place in an to "ad-fraud" prevention subsystem, which required a minimum amount of traffic or some other non-voluntary things like that.
Even more: impenetrable deep learning models trained to maximize ad revenue - imagine pagerank and availability of ads on the site are two of the N features, what would the optimizer suggest you do?
I keep wondering how long until Google page ranks are "adjusted" when using GA (because GA is slow, so GA pages are penalised at the moment, and clearly Google wants people to use GA so they need to fix that).
I think Google tag manager might be faster than analytics , just use GTM and allow analytics. Keep in mind you kinda need to do something like this if you want to comply with GDPR or CPPA as you need user consent to enable analytics.
@dang This is not true. What actions are we taking to curb misinformation on this site?
This is the issue I have with Twitter - there is no room for discussion.
Literally part of my job trouble is troubleshooting creative disapprovals from vendors like google, Microsoft, at&t, etc.
Errors like this happen all the time. I very regularly get errors that I can just resubmit to resolve, or reach out to the vendor and have them resolved. My employer runs ads for thousands of businesses, many of whom are using GA competitors, and we’ve /never/ had this issue. If I had a way to crawl client sites and identify the vendors they use, I would provide a huge list of counter examples.
Misinformation? Do you think the screenshot from TFA has been actively manipulated? I don't think the title is true either, and should be changed. But that's not misinformation... it's a petulant reading of a statement by a Google employee which most of us take as bogus.
Yeah this is kind of semantics but by definition this is misinformation, but definitely not disinformation (which requires active manipulation). This post is to me pretty squarely a false rumor made to elicit suspicion and fear.
I don't think this is actually related to Matomo being a competitor. Malware is much more likely, making this a non-issue. Could be a false positive, too.
Then why would a Google worker (not a machine, but a real life human) tell this person that using their competitor is not allowed? Did you read the screenshot?
The user explained it was Matomo, a Google competitor, and the worker responded with "No, that is not allowed.". Seems to leave absolutely no room for interpretation. It is not about the URL, it is about Matomo.
It is about the URL. The google worker doesn't say anything about matomo, he doesn't add any context, he just displays generic and common discussion patterns.
I picture the setting in my mind and it's the best explanation. Someone sitting in a cubicle or a farm, answering thousand of messages like that per day. He's not reading the chat, he's scanning it for words like "ok", "thanks you", "fixed", "working now", "bye", etc.
Matomo doesn't register on their radar.
The user doesn't explain what Matomo is. His message looks like a copy/paste from matomo's website. It's even put into quote.
This conversation was not around Matomo being an alternative to GA.
Doesn't mean Google doesn't actively classify matomo as malware though.
This Google employee responded to a question. When looking at the question and answer, and the actual resulting situation, it is pretty clear what's happening here.
They actually said "this is not allowed". Sounds very much like a CS agent reiterating that the URL is on a ban list. You reading it like the CS agent is saying using a competitor is just your interpretation. Look at it like this, specifically banning something because it's a competitor would be a huge deal (rightly so). With that in mind, do you really suppose they would tell the agent that directly?
It's no different at all from a support chatbot incorrectly telling you using their competitor is not allowed. This support employee does not write or enforce the contracts for Google beyond a support form. The employee could say "Google requires you send us your first-born child" and it wouldn't mean Google is actually bound to that employee's statements.
Your example is bad because clearly Google has no claims on a child. In this context, a Google employee is telling a Google customer that he is not allowed to use a competitor's product. After the customer has explicitly noted the problem.
Now a lot of people have said this poor drone could not possibly understand the situation well enough to not make statements that are flagrantly anti-competitive. Well, that is Google's problem. Both their automated system and their customer service are behaving in a way that hinders competitors. If they don't fix this, they are liable.
And by the looks of it, it has happened before, so there is a pattern.
What's anticompetitive behavior is for URLs associated with competitors to be banned. They were. Whether a customer support drone was able to identify them as URLs associated with competitors is immaterial.
Plausable but I do not imagine that to be the case. It was recently updated and Matomo has a self-diagnostic includeing "File integrity", it has no warnings. Its also on its own small droplet, so somewhat isoloated.
The Google Rep was clear it was not allowed also (though perhaps misinformed).
He was communicating poorly, but I don't read that as him stating Google's official stance on Matomo. I read it as him saying "those links are not allowed because our link scanner says so, and that's all I know."
There is a more egregious example of Google abusing its dominance with Google Analytics that people often don’t talk about.
With Google Analytics, they offer a free service. Obviously, competitors can’t do that if their business is solely analytics and they don’t have other ways to monetise the service. That’s not the problem. The problem is how Google then use that free service to gain an advantage with their core money-making business - AdWords and DV360:
As anyone in the industry knows, due to many factors (including different attribution methodologies), ad platforms show significantly different results from analytics platforms. The discrepancies easily reach into the double-digit percentages. Any discrepancy of such magnitude is concerning to an advertiser running paid ads. The same discrepancy exists between Google AdWords and Google Analytics too. Except when you integrate the two. Then, Google AdWords data are plugged directly into Google Analytics, eliminating the discrepancy rate and making it seem to any advertiser as if Google AdWords is a far more reliable traffic source then any of their competitors.
It would be very difficult to extrapolate the monetary value of what Google have earned doing this. It is a much more sophisticated and hard to detect example of dominance abuse.
Leveraging your monopoly in one sector (ads) to block your consumers from using a competing service in another sector? Seems like a text-book case of anti-competitive practice.
(Of course in this specific case it does seem likely this is a false positive from the AI and not a deliberate strategy, so probably not something to build your anti-trust case on.)
It was deliberately flagged by Google because it was their decision to use an algorithm for flagging to increase profits by having to pay less humans, so it makes no difference if the actual flag=true operation was performed automatically.
We need to start making faceless multinational corporations responsible for the choices that their AI makes for them.
I cannot build a bridge and let AI decide how strong it should be and if it crashes, be like „welp sorry it was the AIs fault, we didnt spent on actual engineers to save money, I promise the next bridge will be stronger“.
>It was deliberately flagged by Google because it was their decision to use an algorithm for flagging to increase profits by having to pay less humans, so it makes no difference if the actual flag=true operation was performed automatically.
I'm quite sure it does from an anti-trust perspective.
>I cannot build a bridge and let AI decide how strong it should be and if it crashes, be like „welp sorry it was the AIs fault, we didnt spent on actual engineers to save money, I promise the next bridge will be stronger“.
Under some circumstances this will be fine. Using AI doesn't change negligence rules into strict liability rules, it just changes the criteria through which negligence will be determined. It seems likely that most jurors would not be as cantankerous in their outlook towards AI as you are, though.
>I'm quite sure it does from an anti-trust perspective.
You are incorrect. mistakes, or incompetence, or lack of intent do not excuse behavior that results in harm to consumers or prevents competition, which is generally a significant test for a determination on this sort of thing:
In the US in particular, anti-trust law requires courts to evaluate a situation on the basis of 3 benchmarks to determine if one of them is met for an anti-competitive situation: 1) The Per-Se Rule. 2) The Rule of Reason. 3) The Quick Look.
Number 3 in particular makes it easy to view this situation as anti competitive because here the single most important question under this for of review is whether or not there is injury in the market. The formal test is will a person "with even a rudimentary understanding of economics could conclude that the arrangements in question have an anticompetitive effect on customers and markets" In this case, a customer cannot use their product of choice and a competitor is prevented from competing.
Of course an actual court case could go a variety of different ways, but you say you're quite sure that the anti-trust perspective makes a distinction as the GP comment indicated, you are incorrect.
I am genuinely interested in how this would play out in court. On one hand, sure, intent is important in a lot of situations. It could be challenging to "prove" that Google had "bad" intentions just because there is a disconnect between their documented policy and what their AI actually enforces.
That being said, in an anti-trust case it seems like the actual outcome for the consumer is what is most important. Anti-trust laws come into play when monopoly's business practices are not illegal, per se, but ultimately harm the marketplace because of their scale and eventual negative consumer outcomes.
Anyway, INAL, so maybe (certainly) I don't have the full picture here....
Accidentally & continuously ( see firefox ) disabling the ability of users to choose competitors is indistinguishable from doing the same thing on purpose. It's an abuse of their position where they're doing it on purpose or simply too incompetent to not encounter these problems, or simply don't care about prioritizing these fixes.
I doubt they would in any significant way, since the majority of users have JavaScript enabled in their browsers. [1][2]
Furthermore, if you look at the LibreJS project page [3] and then click on the link of the Firefox extension [4], the user count will explain that the vast majority of people on the web won't have it installed and perhaps won't even have heard of it.
If anything, extensions like uBlock Origin [5] would be of more concern in regards to the client side analytics, since they usually have more downloads.
In summary: unless you're running a site that's tailored particularly for free software enthusiasts or the crowd that are overwhelmingly likely to disable JS, then no, it won't matter.
Indeed, that's why i'm saying that they're a bigger problem if you want your analytics to be truthful than LibreJS or people with JS disabled outright, since overall it's more likely that they have an ad blocker of some sort, rather than no support for launching JS at all.
The point is that users will mess with javascript on your page (especially analytics.) And as someone pointed out bellow, bots that run javascript are becoming increasingly common.
Either way you're going to have to do some work with the data (and probably include statistics from the server side anyway.)
But if 1-5% of your data is affected, is it even worth doing anything about it?
Server side logs could be useful for detecting abnormalities indeed, but for getting overall usage statistics, i doubt the occasional bot or user with disabled/blocked JS execution is at all relevant.
Essentially, if 1-5% (example number, the actual one probably differs) of the general population have ad blockers, or will not execute the JS that you want them to, then it stands to reason that the demographics of your site would also be representative of the overall picture.* As for how those numbers would be figured out in the first place - i'm sure that plenty of larger sites and parties with more resources have figured out ways to aggregate this information and have published it (like the statistics in the posts above). So essentially you don't have to look, because others already have.
*unless the audience of your site is really niche and therefore differ in this regard from the average. For example, Facebook would be a decent representation, whereas Hacker News would not.
Mostly to see the usage patterns in your particular site.
Wikipedia or other sources might tell you that "approximately X% of the devices that use e-commerce sites are mobile phones" which would be useful in figuring out that you should have a responsive site, but analytics could tell you "this one element doesn't display properly on mobile devices and therefore 95% of the users on mobile devices don't use this particular functionality".
No, not at all. You can't even compare the tiny amount of people using plugins like that to the vast amount of info you can lose out on by doing no client-side analytics.
I have found that matamo has server side logging, so will be replaceing the Javascript with that. Which is more work on my part but i think a better solution.
You spoke with a support agent who is checking the status of your AdSense campaign. That system has flagged links on your website as 'malicious'. The agent is simply telling you the links are 'not allowed' because the system has flagged them. Ie. you're not allowed to run AdSense on a site with flagged links.
I'm 99% sure this has nothing do with you using a GA alternative.