Misleading title. The thousands of sites GA might "go dark" for are still using the deprecated urchin.js.

Upgrade to the new version; problem solved.

Also misleading...it is purely speculative.

Google MAY cut off support for urchin.js. But with that many sites still using it, it seems unlikely.

see also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552799

I'm sure Google can see just how many sites are still using the old script. They have nothing to gain by shutting those sites out and pissing people off.