Interacting with other humans forces you to confront a simple, uncomfortable rule: always separate what people say from what they actually do. I have neighbors who talk about protecting community character by advocating for illegal behavior. You probably have your own version of privileged NIMBY-ism.
It’s easy to be a born‑again moralist who preaches virtue without offering any real solutions. Perhaps you have a colleague who wraps a power grab in the language of “collaboration.” Classic move!
Pay attention to actions and outcomes instead of getting hypnotized by rhetoric. From an evolutionary perspective it makes sense for organisms to track real behavior, not stated intentions. I’m not sure amoebas have intentions 🧐 - probably not.
Don’t trust, verify. And only then decide if someone has earned your trust.
The same rule applies when you look at large organizations. Very few people in the world are genuinely and wholly munificent. Even Mother Teresa had a shadow side that would repulse most people who formerly referred to themselves as woke.
Once you inspect incentives, money flows, and outcomes you start seeing reality. Don’t get it twisted - public companies are supposed to maximize shareholder value above all else.
“Don’t be evil.”
Arguably Google’s former mantra is the best known company motto of the 21st century. It made for a great poster and bamboozled the weak minded. Instead if you assume that any major platform always acts in its best interest, you’ll usually be correct.
The history of Google Analytics (GA) over the last two decades is an apt case study of incentives playing out in slow motion. Initially, GA launched as a democratizing tool. Back in 2005 when 50 Cent dominated the airwaves, Google acquired a product called Urchin and turned it into a free, hosted analytics platform. You pasted a single script into your site and within a day you had page-views, referrers, and a set of canned reports.
Example:
<script async src=”https://cyanstats.com/cs.js”></script>
You could define Goals based on simple URL rules (like “reached /thank‑you.html”) and see how many people made it through a basic funnel. If you had minimum-viable- technical ability, you could move from I bought a domain to I can see who visited and who converted, with relative ease.
Over the late 2000s and early 2010s, the product grew up. Universal Analytics introduced a more flexible data model, custom dimensions, and eventually gave e-commerce a categorical glow-up.
Agencies and analysts got a ton of power to model complex user journeys, stitch sessions across domains, and instrument detailed behavior with events.
But for us moms and pops, friction started to creep in. The GA user interface gained more tabs, switches and jargon. It quickly became a full-time job (literally an industry) to know the difference between words such as: sessions, hits, last‑click and assisted conversions.
Googlers from this era carried a not-so-quiet arrogance, priding themselves as pure technologists who dismissed style and surface polish. And despite the GA product innovations, the basic flow remained intact. So if you just wanted visits and a couple of simple actions, the Goals UI and the standard reports were still there. You could ignore the advanced stuff if you didn’t need it and still get your job done.
But then things started to feel different once Tag Manager and GA4 entered the picture. Google Tag Manager existed for years, but by 2012 it had become the “best practice” default.
Instead of pasting individual scripts into your site, the flow required you to install one GTM container and then manage everything from Analytics to ad pixels inside the container. If you don’t understand what I am talking about at this point, don’t worry it’s not supposed to make sense for normal people. The key takeaway is that the product’s gravity moved away from democratizing analytics for all to a workflow for ad engineers to manipulate your social media. But hey don’t be evil!
Google Analytics 4.0 (GA4) completed the pivot. It launched in 2020 and became mandatory soon thereafter. GA4 replaced the old “webpage” model with an “event” model. Conceptually it makes sense because most of us consume the Interweb in a mobile-first way, expecting to seamlessly move from there to our laptops, tablets, and back again. However, the basic and most useful use case is all but impossible now.
In order to simply track who visits your domain and perhaps does something simple like clicking on the button for your newsletter you need to:
Create a GA4 property and web data stream.
Create a Tag Manager container.
Add a base GA4 tag in GTM with the right Measurement ID.
Configure the platform you’re using (like a no‑code site builder) to load that GTM container.
In GTM, enable click variables, define a click trigger that matches the button, and create a GA4 event tag wired to that trigger.
Use a separate Preview/Debug interface to confirm the tag fires, then use GA4’s DebugView to confirm the event arrives.
So why is this important? Because Google has controlled the Internet for the last generation and is actively trying to sue others out of existence for doing what they built their company on. NIMBY!
It’s not just me ranting, the GA interface has been widely criticized as confusing and impenetrable for years despite its core structure remaining mostly the same. This is not an accident, it’s just that they don’t give a eff about your pain.
You’re not built for these streets!
Lessons: Don’t take anyone’s high-minded story at face value, whether it is Google, Mother Teresa or your neighbor. Do your own research (DYOR). Don’t be shocked when a giant behaves like a giant. Assume self-interest. Understand incentive structures and be mindful of what you are handing over in exchange for the perceived value you hope to attain.
Don’t be a hater, just don’t get played.
