A Google Blunder- the Sad Story of Urchin

Anenome writes "Google has a track record of buying startups and integrating them into its portfolio. But sometimes those acquisitions go terribly wrong, as Ars Technica argues has been the case with Google's 2005 purchase of web-analytics firm Urchin Software Corp. 'In the wake of Google's purchase of the company, inquiring customers (including Ars Technica) were told that support and updates would continue. Companies that had purchased support contracts were expecting version 6 any day, including Ars. What really happened is this: Google focused its attention on Google Analytics, put all updates to Urchin's other products on the back burner, and rolled out a skeleton support team. Everyone who forked over for upgrades via a support contract never got them, even though things weren't supposed to have changed. The support experience has been awful. Since the acquisition, we have had two major issues with Urchin, and neither issue was solved by Google's support team. In fact, with one issue, we were helped up until the point it got difficult, and then the help vanished. The support team literally just stopped responding.'"

Let's wait for Google Urchin 6, then ...

[darthflo]

... and in the meantime I can really recommend Sawmill which I finde quite loveable as a log processor. [sawmill.net]

Buyouts

[JCSoRocks]

Isn't this just what happens about 50% of the time with company buyouts in tech? It seems like either you're buying them because you want their technology for yourself, or you're trying to eliminate a competitor. (Very rarely some holding company may actually just want to own a piece of the action and make a profit from your hard work). In either case though, the purchasing company doesn't give a crap about the viability of the company they're buying. I wouldn't say this is just google, I'd say this is the way most tech companies with money to spend handle buyouts.

Here's the lowdown.

[Fireye]

Google purchased Urchin outright.

Google/Urchin provided support for a short while, and all was good. Then, Google/Urchin decided to outsource ALL support requests except major bugs. They "trained" authorized support personel from various companies, which are now listed under their resellers page. But, a good percentage of those people know jack about the inner working of Urchin. I feel sorry for them, honestly, because I doubt they were trained properly and there's very little solid documentation.

Urchin is EXTREMELY poorly documented. Want to know how to create your own report inside a profile? It's easy! Now, do you want to analyze some metric in a different way than Urchin does by default? Wow. Good luck. datamap.dm, I hardly knew thee. I still don't know it well, because there's very little documentation and zilch for examples about how the integral parts of the program work. Want to change how some .tpl (report templates) look or present information? Good luck, there is exactly zero documentation about it. Hell, the "support" personel I worked with didn't even know those files existed, or what they did.

So yeah, Google is certainly at fault somewhat, but a lot of the issues people have could have been resolved even prior to the acquirement of Urchin! Documentation will save us, or in it's absence damn us.

Another topic is that Urchin currently has two outstanding LARGE vulnerabilities, as published by US CERT. Google/Urchin was notified back in June or July about these security holes. They claimed a fix was in the works. It's now OCTOBER and they're totally silent on the issue. My support requests (directed directly at google, not at one of their support contractors) go unanswered. There hasn't been an update to the program in years. Google/Urchin is COMPLETELY silent about the Urchin standalone product.

I'm extremely happy that this is getting some public attention, because it bugs the bejeezus out of serious Urchin users.

Re:If anyone would know about an Urchin

[Princeofcups]

>> It would be an Anenome (sic) ...

A sea urchin is an Echinoderm, like starfish and sea cucumbers.
An anemone is a Cnidaria, like coral and jelly fish.

Imagine obligatory wiki links here.

jfs

Re:If anyone would know about an Urchin

[threaded]

I thought an Urchin was the old name for a Hedgehog, and that Sea Urchins are so named because they have lots of things sticking out of them, looking somewhat similar, if you sort of squint sideways with your head cocked to one side.

I blame Microsoft too, for setting the standard.

[JoeCommodore]

This has been the MOU for Microsoft for years buy a company, speak the 'we support our users' talk, take the staff and code, drop the non-MS users and then tout how they are innovating and are the best thing there is.

Any of these ring a bell:
- Fox Software
- Bungie
- SubLogic

All of which made great programs that supported users of multiple platforms, MS bought them, said they were dedicated to enhacing the product across all platforms, made a half assed release or two and then dropped all other platforms due to 'lack of interest' (they claim it was customer lack of interest when it was more like Microsoft's). It's amazing MS Office for Mac has lasted as long as it has...

I am curious on what similarity, does Google limit the user by switching to Analytics- or what is missed by Analytics that isn't by Urchin?

Why PHB's go with commercial services

[SuperBanana]

It makes one wonder how many of these companies eschewed open-source solutions, in favor of expensive "supported" software. Hopefully enough of these examples will eventually reach the tipping point where PHBs will finally begin to wonder what exactly they're getting for their money.

You don't understand why companies prefer commercial solutions.

If I buy services from a company and they fail to deliver, I have choices. Like suing them (example: breach of contract) and recovering damages. I can't do that if I install open-source software, unless I hire a firm to take care of the implementation, and *they* fuck up on what they promised they'd deliver.

Just because you don't understand how something works, doesn't mean it's broken.

Re:Uncertainty

[Typoboy]

That is the bane of my web-app existence. It's to the point where I try to be careful who I ask to test what at what time, because if it is scary enough, they won't come back.

How to Fix Google Analytics

[ajs318]

$ echo "127.0.0.1 googleanalytics.com" >> /etc/hosts
$ echo "127.0.0.1 www.googleanalytics.com" >> /etc/hosts

Does the trick every time .....

Standard Fare

[KillerCow]

The same thing happened to dodgeball [flickr.com] when they were bought. Google buys companies for the people, not the product.

Re:How to Fix Google Analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually have a vhost for both those on a webserver, and point my hosts at that:

                Servername www.google-analytics.com
                ServerAlias google-analytics.com
                DocumentRoot "/home/apache/htdocs/googleanal/"

and then have urchin.js which contains:

function urchinTracker()
{
                return;
}

This makes the web browser a lot happier.

Re:Security issue with Urchin!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it available via https://ssl.google-analytics.com/urchin.js [google-analytics.com]

Re:Two sides to every story

[pintpusher]

Sure its a practical problem, especially with smaller organizations where your scenario is more likely. But that doesn't absolve an organization from its responsibilities. And its also the purpose of things like contracts.

Regardless, if the organization fails to perform its contractual obligations, then there are methods for dealing with that. It is the responsibility of the organization to keep track of its obligations and it is the customer's responsibility to be prepared to deal with an organization that doesn't live up to its obligations. This can range from simply pointing out the problem to filing a lawsuit. A lot of contracts actually deal with this scenario specifically. For example, my two commercial leases have clauses that allow for transfer of the contract to other parties, but force the parties to maintain the terms of contract despite this transfer. But I'm wandering OT with that.

Not Every Time

[Slashdot Parent]

Many webmasters host urchin.js locally to speed up page load times. Google does not recommend this practice [google.com], but they also do not forbid it. I don't particularly feel like trawling through urchin.js, but a quick skim doesn't seem to have that file submitting to google-analytics.com. It seems to go, instead, to analytics.corp.google.com.

At any rate, I think that you'll find that the google analytics hostname is www.google-analytics.com (with a hyphen). I also think that the NoScript firefox plugin will protect you well against googal-analytics as well as a host of other tracking mechanisms.

Cheers!