Just Say No to Analytics

As I was piecing together this site I assumed I would want to add some sort of analytics, that I’d want to see how many hits-per-day, where the hits were from, which posts were popular, etc.. But, then I thought a little more:

• Google Analytics would probably be the easiest to implement. But, while I’m not anti-Google, I’m certainly Google-suspicious.
• Other alternatives like piwik either cost money or need to be self-hosted. I’m in no way opposed to paying money for services when/where I have a real need, but what’s my need here? Self-hosting seems more effort than its worth.
• The rapidly growing adoption of ad-blockers seems like its undermining the ability of many analytics systems to do their jobs.
• Why do I need analytics? I’m not trying to make money from this site or demonstrate its utility to anybody.

I’m not sure there’s any rationale for analytics on this site aside from ego. And, that I’m quite willing to put aside if it saves me some time and effort. (Though I could change my mind in the future if a more compelling reason for tracking analytics arises.)