Been using Google Tag Manager for 4+ years now. Having trouble understanding the point of the "Google Tag" when I'm measuring my website data with GA4 and using the "Google Ads Conversion Tracking" tag to measure conversions from Google Ads.

What role/benefit does the Google Tag provide? I'm sure there's a point to it since Google is recommending it so much, but I'm not seeing it. Does it help make attribution more accurate? Help manage cross-device tracking, or?

I've been Google searching for this, but when I type in "Google Tag", it's giving me results about "Google Tag Manager." I'm just curious about the Google Tag 😂

I'm setting up GA4 on a website and I haven't done this in a while. When I last did this, there were separate tags you could create in a container specific to GA4. Now, they have the sort of catch-all Google tag. When you are in Tag Manager creating a new tag, you get a list of tag options to choose from. In the main list, there is a Google Analytics subsection, but there is also just a "Google Tag" option below it in the main list. However, when you go into the Google Analytics subsection, it has what appears to be the same "Google Tag" (and the GA4 Events tag). My understanding is the the Google Tag itself collects most of the basic events for analytics, but my question is this: Assuming that I don't need to set up any special events, do I need to create a tag using the "Google Tag" under the Google Analytics section AND create a tag using the "Google Tag" option on the main list? Or is that just the same thing?

Hopefully I explained that well enough. I was following this guide and it just shows you how to set up the Google tag with Tag Manager. As you can see, he selects the Google tag present in the main list. So I'm just wondering if I need to do anything more than that to get basic analytics because it seems as though there is no difference between that tag and the one in the "Google Analytics" section (excluding the events tag).