Google has announced its intent to buy Urchin Software Company. Urchin is a San Diego based web analytics firm that offers leading edge tools for analyzing visitor behavior upon websites. Urchin offers two main products, Urchin On Demand (accessible via the Web) and Urchin Software, a modular log-based web analytics software that resides on a server.
According to the Urchin website, “Founded in 1995, Urchin Software Corporation is a leader in the web analytics market. With more than 20% of the Fortune 500 as customers and a user base in the millions, Urchin is the most widely trusted professional web analytics and marketing intelligence software in the world. Urchin’s products offer enterprise level features at a mid-market price point.”
Now why would Google acquire a web analytics company? For several reasons. First, Urchin could be a valuable tool for those who use Google’s Blogger for analyzing visitor traffic. Second, AdWords could benefit from the robustness of Urchin. Third, well that is yet to be seen within the minds at the Mountain View Googleplex.
Now, when the Urchin deal went down, their biggest competitor WebTrends was acquired by Francisco Partners from NetIQ. Francisco Partners is known for being a large, technology-focused private equity fund. According to Ben Ball, general partner of Francisco Partners, “We are proud to establish a deep relationship with WebTrends, and are excited about providing the company with resources to accelerate its growth. We look forward to working with WebTrends’ experienced management team to enhance the company’s customer relationships, product capabilities, and strategic leadership.”
Francisco Partners must be doing a double-take right now since corporate giant Google has more resources to put into Urchin than Francisco Partners will have to throw into WebTrends. What must be even more disturbing for Francisco Partners, though, is that Google is known for giving away free services (such as Blogger). So, if Google intends on giving away Urchin for free (or some form of Urchin) to the general public, then most likely people will flee WebTrends with its hefty price tag ($9,995 for enterprises users), making Urchin the sole proprietor of the number one position for web analytics packages.
There has been some speculation that Google was interested in both Urchin and WebTrends and chose Urchin because of the lower price tag. Another big factor that most likely swayed Google’s plan to go with Urchin instead of WebTrends is that WebTrends owns Google’s long-time nemesis, Web Position Gold. For several years, Google named Web Position Gold by name as a software package to avoid in relation to Google since WPG violated Google’s Terms of Service.
No matter what happens, it will be interesting to keep an eye on how this story develops and to see if there actually still is a WebTrends a few years from now.
