Once Google discarded the Urchin label, renamed the service Google Analytics, and ended the fees it charges, several firms felt the ripples of the search engine company cannonballing into their swimming pool.
Though San Diego-based Web Side Story pointed out its core business is in five-figure sales of its analytics software to large enterprises, investors responded to the Google Analytics announcement by pushing shares of the company down in afternoon trading.
One analytics market leader, WebTrends, noted Jupiter Research’s observation on how Google’s entry “may change the Web analytics landscape and affect the analytics vendors long-established in the space.” The company provided a comment from its CEO and president Greg Drew today:
“Our customers know that enterprise organizations require more than just a set of reports to measure a campaign or understand site traffic. Marketing analytics are mission-critical and enterprise customers need a consultative organization that helps them turn insight into action to improve their business results, which requires industry expertise and services, solution flexibility and organizational trust
An executive from another analytics firm was downright sanguine about Google freeing its product:
Michael Stebbins, VP Marketing for analytics firm ClickTracks, said: “Google is the rising tide that raises all the web analytics ships.The announcement to offer free analytics is a great validation of our market. We’re thrilled they are opening the market’s eyes to what web analytics can do today. At the same time, we need to put it in perspective: when Google offered Blogger it did not put other blogger platforms out of business. When the tide levels out, the web analytics tools that provide the most value for marketers will be the ones that thrive.”
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
