And later we'll introduce Google Psychoanalytics for you paranoids:
Google today gathered its considerable weight, took a running start and
cannonballed into the relatively small pool of Web analytics services. The search giant is now offering
Google Analytics, a sophisticated tool for tracking traffic and other metrics, free to all comers. The service is integrated with Google's AdWords, but will also work with sites that don't participate in that program. Ryan Paul at Ars Technica reports: "It is still relatively difficult to get a good feel for the usefulness of the system at this point, but with over 80 pre-built reports, support for interactive report construction, and tracking for countless attributes,
the amount of data it provides is downright prodigious. In addition to providing critical marketing data, it also tracks browser features so that web developers can make informed design decisions."
All well and good, but another opportunity to consider the cautionary words of John Battelle, writing in Sunday's Mercury News, who reminds us that
everything Google provides to users lets it know that much more about us, for good or ill.
