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A Google Blunder- the Sad Story of Urchin

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the but-analytics-is-free dept.

Anenome writes "Google has a track record of buying startups and integrating them into its portfolio. But sometimes those acquisitions go terribly wrong, as Ars Technica argues has been the case with Google's 2005 purchase of web-analytics firm Urchin Software Corp. 'In the wake of Google's purchase of the company, inquiring customers (including Ars Technica) were told that support and updates would continue. Companies that had purchased support contracts were expecting version 6 any day, including Ars. What really happened is this: Google focused its attention on Google Analytics, put all updates to Urchin's other products on the back burner, and rolled out a skeleton support team. Everyone who forked over for upgrades via a support contract never got them, even though things weren't supposed to have changed. The support experience has been awful. Since the acquisition, we have had two major issues with Urchin, and neither issue was solved by Google's support team. In fact, with one issue, we were helped up until the point it got difficult, and then the help vanished. The support team literally just stopped responding.'"

5 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Buyouts by JCSoRocks · · Score: 5, Informative

    Isn't this just what happens about 50% of the time with company buyouts in tech? It seems like either you're buying them because you want their technology for yourself, or you're trying to eliminate a competitor. (Very rarely some holding company may actually just want to own a piece of the action and make a profit from your hard work). In either case though, the purchasing company doesn't give a crap about the viability of the company they're buying. I wouldn't say this is just google, I'd say this is the way most tech companies with money to spend handle buyouts.

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  2. Here's the lowdown. by Fireye · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google purchased Urchin outright.

    Google/Urchin provided support for a short while, and all was good. Then, Google/Urchin decided to outsource ALL support requests except major bugs. They "trained" authorized support personel from various companies, which are now listed under their resellers page. But, a good percentage of those people know jack about the inner working of Urchin. I feel sorry for them, honestly, because I doubt they were trained properly and there's very little solid documentation.

    Urchin is EXTREMELY poorly documented. Want to know how to create your own report inside a profile? It's easy! Now, do you want to analyze some metric in a different way than Urchin does by default? Wow. Good luck. datamap.dm, I hardly knew thee. I still don't know it well, because there's very little documentation and zilch for examples about how the integral parts of the program work. Want to change how some .tpl (report templates) look or present information? Good luck, there is exactly zero documentation about it. Hell, the "support" personel I worked with didn't even know those files existed, or what they did.

    So yeah, Google is certainly at fault somewhat, but a lot of the issues people have could have been resolved even prior to the acquirement of Urchin! Documentation will save us, or in it's absence damn us.

    Another topic is that Urchin currently has two outstanding LARGE vulnerabilities, as published by US CERT. Google/Urchin was notified back in June or July about these security holes. They claimed a fix was in the works. It's now OCTOBER and they're totally silent on the issue. My support requests (directed directly at google, not at one of their support contractors) go unanswered. There hasn't been an update to the program in years. Google/Urchin is COMPLETELY silent about the Urchin standalone product.

    I'm extremely happy that this is getting some public attention, because it bugs the bejeezus out of serious Urchin users.

  3. Re:If anyone would know about an Urchin by Princeofcups · · Score: 3, Informative

    >> It would be an Anenome (sic) ...

    A sea urchin is an Echinoderm, like starfish and sea cucumbers.
    An anemone is a Cnidaria, like coral and jelly fish.

    Imagine obligatory wiki links here.

    jfs

    --
    The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
  4. How to Fix Google Analytics by ajs318 · · Score: 3, Informative

    $ echo "127.0.0.1 googleanalytics.com" >> /etc/hosts
    $ echo "127.0.0.1 www.googleanalytics.com" >> /etc/hosts

    Does the trick every time .....

    --
    Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
  5. Re:Security issue with Urchin!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Isn't it available via https://ssl.google-analytics.com/urchin.js