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Yahoo to Take on Google Analytics

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the battle-of-the-network-titans dept.

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."

7 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Good luck with all that by carcosa30 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
    1. Re:Good luck with all that by Kickersny.com · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Two boat anchors fall twice as fast.

      I think our friend Newton that would disagree with that.
    2. Re:Good luck with all that by larry+bagina · · Score: 5, Informative

      Galileo.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    3. Re:Good luck with all that by Goaway · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Good luck with all that by MrNaz · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.

      --
      I hate printers.
  2. What is the value? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  3. Google Analytics = Urchin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.