> Nothing is “free”

Can we stop with this nitpicking? You’re not paying any money, so it’s “free”. That Google analyses your data is another story: it could do it whether you’re paying or not.

Google cannot analyze your user traffic if they don't have a pixel on your site. What are they going to do? Look at your traffic logs?

Designing a website that has traffic insights while respecting your visitor's privacy requires effort.

If you want to delegate the insights, you can pay for it or let Google look at your data. The data goes straight into their ad exchange analysis. In fact, you cannot publish Google ads on your site unless you have had google analytics running on your site for a while.