Microsoft to Compete with Google Analytics

By the Betanews Staff | Published July 24, 2007, 3:18 PM

Microsoft has offered a glimpse of its upcoming competitor to Google Analytics, which currently goes by the code-name "Gatineau." The service promises to offer features beyond Google's and Beta 1 is expected to go live later this summer.

According to Ian Thomas, who works in Microsoft's Digital Advertising Solutions group, "Beta 1 will include the ability to segment data by both age and gender buckets, so you can get more of an idea of what kind of visitors you have." Thomas says the information is obtained anonymously through cookies, although privacy advocates will surely ask questions when Gatineau launches.

Comments

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Amazing how much of Microsoft is just shadowing what Google and Apple are doing. The exception is in the enterprise/corporate space.

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What do you expect? Ever since the browser....

Further amazing is how they expend so much money on reinventing others' wheels-- instead of devoting those resources to instead make sure their core/base product gets done right first of all.

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They can`t keep up with the competition.
They risk a lot trying to provide more features (i.e. visitor age).
They put eye-candy instead of usability.

They just do this stuff because they have to. Otherwise we'd still have 2MB inboxes.
Same applies to Yahoo!

It`s not the fact that Google came up with the idea or not, nor is it that it`s better or worse than Google Analytics, it`s just that Google is doing stuff for each of us (making money while at it), while the rest of these a**holes are just about the cash flow.

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Good thing we have goole here so Microsoft will have someone to get ideas from weew!

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Blah blah blah, microsoft sucks, no originality. Too bad Google Analytics wasn't made by google, it was Urchin. And your precious Google wasn't the first analytics provider, nor does it's software stand up to most other offerings.

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urchin made it hot. google made it free. without google it would still be a pay service.

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Well then, tell us, oh Great Insightful One: what MS has ever invented-- not Dos, not Windows itself, not the browser, not Search... although they did master the art of copying innovations while strongarming everyone into including ONLY their version and not the original & better one...

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Are they getting the age information by gauging how quickly the user moves around the page and if gender if they are drawn to girly colors?

Google Analytics is a silent partner in gathering statistics. Microsoft seems to be releasing yet another compete-with-Google-in-a-more-convulted-fashion product.

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