Google metrics aren't always used for spying on people -- news sites in particular drool over every possible metric to measure popularity, referrals, etc. to better tailor their online marketing (and sometimes story selection). It sounds weird, but I'm not sure a website without tracking would be as good.
No, I don't think it would be. For a company to announce that they were forgoing tracking would be a brave step. I understand that analytics is a really really useful thing for a company.
But, as a corrolary, what if Google Analytics alters the content in a way that makes it less useful? The obvious example here is clickbait articles (See, Clickhole), but I think there's other more subtle problems here. Isn't the job of a reporter to report what _they_ think is news, rather than what people want to read?
Beyond that, I am troubled by the spying on people. It occurs to me that even if I remove Google Analytics from my website, anyone coming to or going from my website will be subject to monitoring by Google. It's not exactly opt out.
Microtransactions are hard, though, that problem still hasn't been solved.
Website owners can still get most of their metrics without google the same way we did it before google existed: they can analyze their Apache/Nginx logfiles.
Stats is hard? Find some software that does if for you. Better yet, figure out how to do some of it yourself (it's not paritc8ularly hard). Or hire some statisticians. This way, you free your business from being dependent on a 3rd party.
