{"id":31632,"date":"2021-02-10T16:24:13","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T21:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=31632"},"modified":"2021-05-16T11:16:50","modified_gmt":"2021-05-16T15:16:50","slug":"is-apple-banning-free-analytics-sdks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/10\/is-apple-banning-free-analytics-sdks\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Apple Banning Free Analytics SDKs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allen Pike<\/a> (tweet<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

The most popular analytics SDKs are free because they’re owned by companies that sell ads, or share data with those companies: Google Analytics, Flurry, and Google’s Firebase. Paid competitors like Mixpanel and Amplitude can be really powerful, but often cost thousands of dollars a year or more.<\/p>\n

Now, I can’t find this said explicitly anywhere. But it seems<\/em> like, along with the incoming restrictions on IDFA and ad attribution, Apple is also enacting a de-facto ban on these free analytics SDKs.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Firebase<\/a>, Google Analytics<\/a>, and Facebook<\/a> have been releasing updates and documentation to help developers navigate Apple’s questions, but conspiciously they don’t directly answer them. Instead they answer different, related questions that are maybe helpful but are certainly not decisive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

What’s becoming obvious is that these coming changes in iOS 14.5 are about a lot<\/em> more than just the IDFA tracking identifier.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n