Web giant Google once used the slogan “Don’t be mean” to distinguish itself from competitors. But today, a growing number of privacy-friendly start-ups are rallying around the “Don’t be Google” mantra.
In their sights? Google Analytics, a statistical tool used by more than half of the world’s websites to understand the browsing habits of Internet users.
Last week, France followed Austria in declaring that Google’s practice of transferring personal data from the European Union to its US servers was illegal under European data protection regulations (GDPR).
Google disagrees, saying the data is anonymized and the scenarios being considered in Europe are hypothetical.
Nevertheless, software developers around the world see this as an opportunity to put privacy protection at the heart of their products. Aware that they are not going to overthrow Google’s dominance, their goal is instead to inject some fairness and choice into the market.
“The week when Google Analytics was deemed illegal by the Austrian data protection authority was a good week for us,” says Paul Jarvis, who heads up Canadian startup Fathom Analytics.
He claims that new subscriptions have tripled during this week, but does not want to give exact figures. Google dominates the market with 57% of websites using its service, according to W3Techs.
An “alternative” internet
The first turning point for privacy-friendly software developers first came in 2013, when whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed how US security agencies were able to collect users’ personal data, notably via Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
“We already knew part of it,” explains Matthieu Aubry, founder of Matomo, which presents itself as an “alternative” to Google Analytics. “But when (Snowden) made (his revelations), we had proof that we weren’t just paranoid or making things up.”
Another element in the sights of these young companies: the complexity of Google Analytics.
“You have 1,000 different dashboards and all that data, but it doesn’t help you if you don’t understand it,” says Michael Neuhauser, who launched Fair Analytics last month.
Unlike Google, these privacy-focused startups don’t use cookies to track users around the web and offer a much simpler array of data, helping them stay within GDPR limits.
But making a living with these tools is not easy.
Marko Saric, founder of Plausible Analytics, and Paul Jarvis of Fathom Analytics, both spent time and money on their projects before they could pay themselves a salary. Both start-ups still operate with small teams working remotely in different countries and having direct contact with customers.
“For a long time, we didn’t even have a company around the project, it was a pure community”, adds Matthieu Aubry, who founded Matomo in 2007 when he was only in his twenties. .
Today his company now has a global reach and contributes, according to him, to the creation of an “alternative internet” not dominated by the big technology companies.
But one big hurdle remains: Google can afford to offer its tools for free, while smaller companies have to charge their customers even a few dollars a month.
“All these free products that we use and love, we don’t pay for them with money, we pay for them with data and privacy,” Paul Jarvis points out.