The Origins Of Google Analytics (2009-12-2)
It all began back in the latter part of 2005 when Google bought a prominent web analytics company called Urchin. Soon afterwards they began offering the Urchin product free of charge to some large technology publications. Based on the success of this, Google developed the Google Analytics service, which was modelled on the Urchin software and offered it to the general public. The best thing Google Analytics had going for it was that it was free and as a result it generated incredible amounts of interest. Upon it’s launch it was estimated that a quarter of a million accounts were created overnight, tracking half to three quarters of a million websites. Google didn’t anticipate such high demand and subsequently couldn’t handle the numerous requests for new accounts. This resulted in Google having to implement waiting lists so that web masters could register their intent to use the product. They could then be given access to the facility when the resources became available. Apparently where Google went wrong was forecasting the success of Google Analytics based on previous sales of the Urchin product. With a huge interest in web analytics, a free product would always be much more highly sought after and incomparable to any similar product with a monthly fee.