Yahoo to Take on Google Analytics

whencanistop writes "Having seen Google set up their Google Analytics product for free (in an attempt to get everyone to spend more money on adwords) and then seen Microsoft release their version of a free web analytics tool into beta, Yahoo have decided to do the same thing, by buying someone else and releasing it into the wild for free. Great news for bloggers who don't want to sign up for Google's 'evil' plans."

Comments

Good luck with all that

[carcosa30]

It's funny to watch Yahoo scrambling for market share. If the Microsoft bid is successful, it'll be funny to watch Microsoft hitching their wagon to Yahoo. Two boat anchors fall twice as fast.

It's not quite game set and match to Google, but in a number of spaces it's starting to look like endgame.

Re:Good luck with all that

[Kickersny.com]

Two boat anchors fall twice as fast.

I think our friend Newton that would disagree with that.

Re:Good luck with all that

[larry bagina]

Galileo.

Re:Good luck with all that

[Goaway]

Not necessarily. Anchors usually fall in water, where drag is high and terminal velocity is quickly reached. Thus the speed of fall mainly depends on the combined drag of the two anchors, which may or may not be twice the drag of one anchor, depending on all kinds of factors.

Re:Good luck with all that

[MrNaz]

An easy example of working out terminal velocity can be calculated with Stokes' Law.

In general terms, the two anchors are likely to fall at the same rate assuming they dont affect each other's fluid displacement, as you would expect if they are falling side by side. If, however, one was on top of the other, then the sink speed would likely increase, as you'd have a greater mass behind the displacement and hence a greater force, but the turbulence caused by the leading edge of the lower anchor would likely decrease the drag experienced by the second.

Of course, the fact that the anchors are not regular shapes means that this becomes monstrously complex when you try to actually calculate any numbers. In fact, even were they two perfect spheres, it'd still be monstrously complex. Come to think of it, fluid dynamics is monstrously complex in general.

Monstrously yours,
- Naz.

Re:Good luck with all that

[BlueGecko]

I actually have to disagree with your sentiment. It's long past time that Yahoo had a competitor to Analytics, because it dramatically increases the value of Yahoo's ad service.

Most people focus on Analytics as being good for web developers because it lets them track where their visitors come from. That's true, but missing the point: the value for web developers that Google cares about is that it helps you, both directly and indirectly, increase your ad revenue. In so doing, they increase their own revenue, both immediately (the more clicked-on ads you have, the more they get paid) and long-term (if you're making more money, you're more likely to keep using them). Analytics is the perfect loss-leader for online advertising.

Yahoo, meanwhile, lacks any such tool. Yes, the Yahoo Publisher Network lets you get basic ad stats, but it just doesn't approach the information Google can give me with their AdWords + Analytics combination. If I'm going to be using Analytics, why not just use AdWords/Double Click too, and be done with it? Acquiring an Analytics competitor gives Yahoo vertical integration on one of their key products in a way that should directly positively impact their bottom line.

Though this may be Yahoo "scrambling for market share," it's a smart scramble. More of this and fewer surreal pairings with AOL, and Yahoo could return to viability.

Google-analytics.com is a PITA

[Anonymous Coward]

If people are going to use Google Analytics for their sites, perhaps they should wait until Google fixes google-analytics.com so it can actually handle the demand. I'm sick and bloody tired of siting and staring at Firefox as it waits for a response from Googles asthmatic servers.

Back on topic, who cares what Yahoo! are doing? They haven't been a relevant force on the web since 2001.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[ForumTroll]

Why did the small potato murder all of the other potatoes??? Can't the potatoes all just get along?

What is the value?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I think competition is good in pretty much any format, I'm starting to wonder what value all of these additional analytic tools are providing. I'm an online marketing manager and with Google Analytics, Microsoft's Gatineau (or whatever they call it now) and server logs, the market for free analytics software is already saturated. Then there's the considerable amount of premium packages such as Webtrends etc that all, in the end, essentially show the same friggen data in different ways.

As an aside, if the Microsoft bid does go through, do they merge Gatineau and Indextools? Would anyone really care if either went away?

Re:Google is NOT EVIL

[ForumTroll]

We've had this conversation more than once, but to those who have not been aware, Google is not evil.....yet.

Whew. Thank god you posted! For a second there I thought that I might have to form an opinion of my own. Thank you Slashdot collective!

Google Analytics = Urchin

[Anonymous Coward]

The blurb sounds kind of down on Yahoo for buying somebody and then giving the product away, but Google did exactly the same thing. Google Analytics is a retooled version of Urchin, a web stats company that Google purchased in 2005.

Re:Google is NOT EVIL

[Janos421]

but the point is, you shouldn't be putting your information on the net if you do not wish for it to be seen. What information am I putting on the net when I'm just browsing a web site with Google/DoubleClick ads/analytics? None I presume, but that does not prevent Google from getting sensitive information about my habits

The difference is, when you ask Google that you'd like to remain private, they listen and and stop prying. Seriously? Never heard of that, could you tell me where the form is?

--
Search engines are not your friends : SquiggleSR

Re:Get Out of the Way for Victory

[Quixote]

Adblock is your friend. :-)

I block any 3rd-party site that takes too long to respond.

Re:Get Out of the Way for Victory

[ajs]

The best way to compete with Google Analytics would be to set it up somehow so that I never see "Waiting for Google Analytics" in my browser while a page is blank, stalled and not loading. That's just a terribly designed site that should be put to death mercifully. If Google's service is tar-pitting your page rendering, then you've done it wrong (probably loading lots of data as XML and then rendering it using JavaScript after the page is fully loaded. Good sites simply don't do this.

Re:Who is more evil?

[ajs]

Through Doubleclick, Google's the most evil online entity. Yahoo's taking a step in that direction though. Doubleclick was an annoying company that cared nothing for its actual users and only for their paying customers, true (though now that Google has purchased them, it's pretty clear that they're simply being dismantled for people and customers). Yahoo! has been turning in Chinese political dissidents. I'm having a hard time drawing an ethically parallel line between those.

When a company says that their guiding principle is not to be evil, perhaps it's not the best use of our time to seek out evil in everything they do. Perhaps we could continue to treat them like any other company and judge them on their deeds?

Re:Who is more evil?

[slaingod]

Forgot I reinstalled my system, so I wasn't logged in.. doh.

How was DoubleClick evil? I'm not sure I get it. I worked there for 6 years, and know a lot about what went on. So I'm not really sure where they got such a bad reputation, other than they did what everyone else was doing and were successful at it.

That said, I will admit that the purchase and suggested integration of the offline catalog thingy (Abacus I think), was not well thought out, but I would also say that someone was going to try it, and they laid off as soon as it got to be an issue.

Otherwise, what does DCLK do? For the most part they are simply the middleman between the advertisers and the producers. Somehow they have a worse reputation than DeBeers, and they are the axe murderers of middlemen.

It's not like any of the sites that DCLK does business would suddenly just not have ads if DCLK never existed. DCLK didn't make popups to my knowledge. They were simply a transmission medium (ISP in some minds, virus in others, lol) that provided reporting and targeting for advertisers across multiple sites when the major sites were sort of walled fortresses. Meaning you had to book ads with Yahoo specifically through their ad dept., then go to Altavista, and book ads directly with them, etc. They just standardized things and made it so advertisers just had to learn one system to book ads on all of them.

I'm sure I'll earn some bad karma for this, but I am interested in the actual details of what they do that is different from everyone else in the business that singles them out.