Slicecast

Google has done it again.

And this time I think that Google is really going to change the way businesses do their business online, by launching a free (that's right free) web analytics solution - just 8 months after Google's acquisition of Urchin Software. Google Analytics as the service is referred to is free for sites that have less than 5m page views per month, making it a more than adequate solution for any small to medium size business.

Rather than try and make some assumptions on how great the service is, I'm going to run Google Analytics on the site over a week before reviewing the functionality of the service. This way I'm going to be able to better critique what it means, and how much of a threat to the enterprise guys at WebSideStory and Omniture this means.

Connecting with Google adWords this tool is going to give the small business owner immense power over his already highly trackable advertising via adWords - think about it - adding funnel analysis, shopping cart abandonment, visitor profiling, campaign conversion - this is stuff that has been only really offered to the customers of HBX and SiteCatalyst and the like.

I'd love to hear what WebSideStory and Omniture think about this release, I'd imagine you aren't too concerned for your enterprise customers because I'm fairly certain Google Analytics isn't going to give the depth of analysis - but for smaller customers this may have a profound impact. The commoditisation of web analytics perhaps? Perhaps a new revenue stream from analytics - so professional services become the real revenue stream rather than the sale of 1x1 pixels on websites.....

Things are about to get interesting...