Frankly I can understand that ads selling company like Google wants to track its users. Their core business depends on that.
Why Gitlab wanted to do this I have no idea, sounds like some marketing people came up with such idea "because everyone is doing this"?
Tracking wasn't going to bring much revenue, if any, so they could just get rid of that, trying to turn it into some positive PR. The cynic in me tells me that if they smell any significant money from tracking they would tell HN and the rest to back off (or would added some convoluted way to opt-out from tracking).
Why Gitlab wanted to do this I have no idea, sounds like some marketing people came up with such idea "because everyone is doing this"?
Tracking wasn't going to bring much revenue, if any, so they could just get rid of that, trying to turn it into some positive PR. The cynic in me tells me that if they smell any significant money from tracking they would tell HN and the rest to back off (or would added some convoluted way to opt-out from tracking).