Whit Andrews

Gartner’s redoubtable Bill Gassman has published a new research note on Google Analytics. It’s a lengthy, careful, detailed look at the Google Analytics product that serves as an effective window into the state of the current Web site analytics market. (Warning on that click — Bill’s note is behind the paywall. Sorry, folks; that’s how we pay the rent here.)

Gassman’s note is worth considering in the context of the Chrome OS announcement for a number of reasons. Let’s look at how Google Analytics fits into the recent history of site tracking analysis and other research:

1. Google started out slow. “…the initial offering was primitive when compared to commercial, subscription-based competition…” writes Gassman of Google Analytics in his extended review of its value, which tracks to other Google products I have dealt with, including the search appliance (which was extremely primitive when it launched, but which did what many enterprises needed done). Google likes to let functionality sort of trickle into a product to add flexibility in a kind of reverse fossilization.

That’s not going to be OK with an operating system. Yes, Ray points out (along with many others) that it’s a New Kind of of OS, but it will need to be highly stable and mature. No one wants a wonky operating system. Perhaps Chrome (the browser) was the necessary scaffolding on which Google will have developed its strategic direction. If not, and even to some degree if so, releasing an operating system is a significantly different commitment to releasing an email service that doesn’t exit beta for a long time.

2. As Google Analytics matured, many felt the site analytics business was so totally done. When I started at Gartner, we agreed that site analytics would become part of business intelligence, and so it did. Nevertheless, there was room and has been room for many new perspectives to emerge on Web site analytics, from action-oriented systems like Baynote to ASP-centric solutions. OS’s looked pretty done, but obviously there’s ample space for another kind of OS, whether you want to characterize it as a cloud OS or a network-centric one or – and here my skepticism, cynicism and opportunistic bent will out — an advertising-friendly one.

3. Disruption is certain. “Competition is driving Google Analytics forward and forcing competitors to innovate at the high-end of the Web analytics market,” Bill writes. In enterprise search, the Google appliance line served to force a final evolution of less-functional, inexpensive products — and dragged giant Microsoft into the business to customers’ likely benefit. Google outsold all comers for a significant period of time, and now Microsoft — no bit player in the OS drama — is responding through a mature, intelligent search strategy targeted at similar customers and more strategic opportunities as well.

Certainly, Google’s institutional patience will be tested as the drumbeat of competition for Chrome OS builds ahead of its release, and as vendor impatience for an effective foil for Microsoft (and Linux, too) also swells. Chrome will demand it address its practices differently and with new kinds of initiative.

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