> Can we cut through the clickbait and see what's wrong here. If my website askes users for their permission to use GA and they click yes then is that still illegal here? I see this as yes it's still illegal.

From what I can tell: If you ask your users for permisssion ("informed consent"), then no, it is not illegal. The way I understood the court case in Austria, the disputed point was whether or not the use of GA falls under the GDPR. If it does fall under it, then you are obliged to ask your users for consent ("opt-in"). If it does not, you can use it freely without consent.

Because analytics data isn't worth that much if you collect only part of the data, most collectors of data do not want to ask users for their consent, because most users would reject this.

But IANAL. In any case, please stop using Google Analytics, and self-host your analytics using Matomo, Plausible, or something similar. Matomo can also be configured to use server-side analytics, in which case your analytics become both less invasive (no client-side JS needed) and more complete (can't be blocked by ad-blockers).