If airtags were used almost solely to nonconsensually and surreptitiously stalk people (i.e. not to track the belongings of the people buying them), yes I think it would be fair to blame Apple. Especially if that were the advertised purpose, as it is with GA.
Google Analytics is a tool that websites use to track users, similar to how a store might use a pen & paper to keep track of phone numbers or names. The store made the decision to buy the pen to track users. Why are you angry with the pen company?
Google Analytics is not going around tracking users. They provide a service that the website you decided to go to (cnn.com, bbc.com) is using. If you have to be angry, be angry with cnn or bbc.
Pens have a purpose other than surveillance, and aren't as capable as machines. A better analogy would be Bluetooth trackers and cameras with machine vision to identify and watch people's movements and eye gaze as they move around the store. And yes, that is creepy and the manufacturers should be criticized for creating it.
Also, client side scripts do not run on the website's property. They are taking advantage of the wide-open security model of web clients (the model they coincidentally get to define because they dump massive amounts of money into giving away a free browser, making competition in the space nearly impossible) to use people's computers for unauthorized purposes. It's a malware payload just like a crypto miner. They should be treated the same way (or more severely) that they would be if they published miners and told web developers to add them to get free money (taking their own cut of course). The operator and the tool creator should both be blamed for shady behavior when the tool is designed and advertised for shady purposes.
> manufacturers should be criticized for creating it.
Manufacturers make things when there's a market. If Google didnt build Google Analytics, someone else would (Maybe Microsoft, or Apple) because the demand exists.
Sure, there's a need for a product like GA, and in a vacuum someone else would create a similar product but whatever value it provides to the market and the users does not justify socially malignant behaviour from a convicted monopolist
If GA didn't exist there's no guarantee that the alternatives would create the same negative externalities that damage privacy of strangers while delivering value to the users of the software.
Google Analytics ultimately operates the way it does not because it's necessarily the best way to provide value to the sites that use it, but because it serves Google's monopolistic and unscrupulous interests.
Other people steal, run scams, etc. Doesn't mean I have to. Google doesn't have to create surveillance software even if they suppose someone else will.
Why haven't they created crypto miners for even more profit? It would be more ethical and less wasteful than the surveillance/ads combo. Obviously others will and have done it.
