Google's new free service, Google Analytics, has inspired a tremendous response, both among users and in the press. So what is the service? Why are people up in arms about it? Can you benefit from it? Keep reading.
When Google bought Urchin Web Analytics back in March of 2005, a number of observers speculated about what the company would do. Urchin offered a service for $400 a month that helped users track the effectiveness of their online advertising strategies. Since Google makes most of its money from advertising, it wasn’t too difficult to see the connections. Google slashed the price of Urchin’s service to $199 a month, then, in November, it took the big step of making the service free. Of course, it also renamed it Google Analytics.
Despite the uproar it caused (more on that shortly), the move should not have been a surprise. Google has a habit of buying a company, taking the best it has to offer, remaking and renaming it, and releasing it for free to an excited public eagerly awaiting the next cool thing from the search engine giant. Google Earth is the example that comes to mind most quickly, but there have been others. If “Googlization” isn’t a word, it should be.
Indeed, the analysts at least weren’t surprised. “When they first announced Urchin, I speculated about a couple of possible outcomes,” recalls Eric Peterson of Jupiter Research. “The most frightening for Web analytics companies was that they would do tag-based analytics, freely available and supported by the global Google brand, and that’s exactly what they’ve done.”
The issue is more complex. Not all of the web analytics companies are quaking in their boots about Google Analytics. Some may even be smirking a bit over the way the release turned into a bit of a fiasco during its first week. On the other hand, one Google watcher unfavorably compared the move to something Microsoft did a few years ago, which again brings Google’s “Do no evil” motto into question.
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