I’ve been a long-time proponent of web analytics, requiring all of my clients to implement analytics, writing articles in trade magazines, and staying abreast of changes in the industry.  But yesterday’s announcement by Google of providing the Urchin services for FREE really blew me away. 

I’ve looked over their offering, and it seems quite robust.  It appears to offer about 95% of the features offered by competitors costing $1,000 per month or more. 

On the down side, I’m reading in several places (DM News, Web Analytics Forum, etc.) that there should be some concern about privacy issues, and Google using the data collected “against you.” From what I’ve seen of Google, these concerns may not be entirely off-base.  You can be sure that Google will use the collective and individual intelligence they glean from the web data gathered from this “free” program.  Yes, they will probably use it to set and negotiate pricing for current and future advertising mechanisms.  That may be bad.  However, they may also use it to find new ways to maximize the collective advertising dollars of everyone that plays.  Let’s face it, Google is a significant source of revenue for many companies.  If Google uses the collected data to continue to improve their offerings, and thus improve the revenues and profits of thousands of businesses, is that really a bad exchange for letting them peek at your data?

Sound off with your views…