Ok, this is a little late but google has announced Analytics – formerly Urchin – and RSS Reader. I’m not one bit surprised by either announcement but rather it was a matter of time really. And while playing around with Google Reader, I stumbled upon what seems to be a new account management interface and a portal-like google homepage – “personalized home“. It’s starting to get the feel of Yahoo but with the Google innovation.
Once a user of Urchin, and hearing the news when Google bought Urchin back in March of this year, I first thought; “what does this mean for the contract we have signed with Urchin”, specifically “will Urchin go from costing hundreds or even thousands per month to being free or a benefit to those adwords/adsense customers? Well, it seems we have the answer, or at least a pretty good idea. It’s free! Now, I speculate what the feature set will be in comparison to the features I once knew. I am speculating that the average user will get a stripped down version and for those with an adsense relationship, would get the additional commerce tracking and such. Then again, it would seem that Analytics purpose is just that, to track and analyze keywords, campaigns, etc and stripping out those features would take away from the edge that Analytics provides.
However, why would the average joe sign up for Google Analytics if there wasn’t some commerce tracking motivation behind it? In my case, I want the friendly interface and improved reporting that I am used to with Urchin and to say goodbye to the dated and less intuitive awstats and webalizer. Do I need the adsense/adwords campaign analysis, purchase funnel, or any of the other commerce features? No. Will I need them in the foreseeable future? Not likely. Will I sign up with Google Analytics regardless of this? I’ve already done so.
Now onto the Google Reader, I’ve long been a user of Bloglines and after comparing it to the alternatives, have found it the ideal and only way to follow your RSS feeds.
Blended with the existing Gmail interface (including the popular AJAX implementation) and some Bloglines features, I am pondering the move to Google Reader. Not just for the sake of it, or because I want to try something new, but because I haven’t been so impressed with the responsiveness and usability of Bloglines. And of course, why NOT have the google search capabilities for your feeds?
I’ve already signed up for Google Analytics, added a couple feeds to my Google Reader and customized my personal google homepage. I now see my local weather, local news, new email, sports updates and even a quote of the day on my google homepage. What’s next… my guess is Google Calendar. I’ve been waiting patiently, along with many others.
[EDIT] – Software Engineer, Adam Sah at google blogs about the personalized google homepages.