I think it is possible to do tracking responsibly. I don’t really see a problem with server-side anonymized tracking used to improve the product.
(But yes, the blog author also talks about FB and Google pixel tracking, which is very different)
It's against Google's terms of service to collect personally identifiable information so it's anonymized there, too. It's the same -- you can collect data server side via the measurement protocol via the same hit parameters. Either way, you can be responsible about measurement.
