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Mountain View delivers Google Analytics opt-out

Plug-in for no tracking

Mountain View has released a browser add-on that opts you out of Google Analytics, the traffic monitoring service now used by 71 per cent of the top domains on the interwebs.

Google announced the plug-in on Tuesday with a post to its Public Policy blog, following through on a promise it made in mid-March. The plug-in is currently labeled as a "beta."

"You can download and install an add-on for your desktop browser that will stop data from being sent from your computer when you visit websites that use Google Analytics Javascript to track usage," the post reads. "This means the information from your visit will not be sent to Google Analytics or included in its reports."

According to a study from the University of California, Berkeley, Google Analytics was used on 71 per cent of roughly 400,000 top domains as of March 2009. Meanwhile, Google AdSense was used by over 35 per cent of the top domains and Google DoubleClick by over 26 per cent. Taken together, the services were tracking users on 92 of the net's top 100 sites and about 88 per cent of almost 400,000 others.

Google already offers an opt-out plug-in for its AdSense-backed ad network, and this maintains your opt-out even if you clear cookies. Its ad network now uses the same tracking cookie as DoubleClick, but Google says that it is not sharing data between the two.

The Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on is available for Internet Explorer 7 and 8, Google Chrome 4.x and higher, and Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and higher. ®

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