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.'"

Two sides to every story

[d0rkb0y]

So a company made promises regarding a product right before they sold. Are the people who made those promises to you still in charge of the product? Did they cash out and move on to another venture? I'm sorry for your loss, but you should put some effort into learning what really happened. You have posted exactly what I am posted, which is opinion. I don't feel this is news worthy.

Breach.

[iknownuttin]

So a company made promises regarding a product right before they sold.

It looked to me that they signed a contract. Therefore, wouldn't it be breach of contract and be actionable in court?

Uncertainty

[beavis88]

What companies like Google don't realize is that it's the uncertainty that kills customers. Most of us won't really care if you're going to buy Urchin, move all the best pieces to Google Analytics, and then kill it off - just tell us what the fuck you are doing so we can plan accordingly. Dicking people around by pretending to support what you know will be a dead product is a good way to get people to hold grudges against you.

FOSS losers

[Generic Guy]

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.

Re:Buyouts

[Larry Lightbulb]

Another reason is that the buyer wants to get the customer base, so they can then slow down and phase out the earlier product and offer an 'upgrade' to their main product. Buying a company for this reason can be cheaper than advertising, etc, to get new customers.

Re:I blame Microsoft

[quanticle]

Ok, I'll bite...

Price doesn't have to be the only basis for competition. You can compete on service, and quality of product as well. To make an analogy, look at the retail market. Walmart competes on price, and its pretty successful. Target, knowing that it can't beat Walmart on price, competes by having brighter stores, and higher quality goods. Recently, Target has had a higher growth rate than Walmart, indicating that atmosphere and quality are criteria used by consumers to evaluate stores.

Similarly, you don't have to compete on price with Microsoft, and if you do, you'll probably lose. The trick is to go for quality and service - something that Google has been going for, except in this case. That's why the continued disregard of existing Urchin customers was a blunder - it put a black mark against Google's reputation for good customer service.

Re:Honestly, who cares?

[Fireye]

Errr, the version of Urchin he's referring to postprocesses Apache/IIS/Websphere/etc log files. You don't have to use cookies to track users (though it helps). ... so, disregarding cookies, why is Urchin evil?

Sue!

[jbrandv]

I say go after the deep pockets of Google, demand a jury trial, profit! When they bought the company they also have to take on their customer support. I suspect that a jury would agree.

Are they finally evil?

[speaker of the truth]

Come on, if Microsoft did this we'd be yelling loudly how bad they were.

Re:Uncertainty

[lymond01]

What companies like Google don't realize is that it's the uncertainty that kills customers.

This.

Not that Google doesn't realize this, but they dropped the ball in this case. We have a few major systems being rolled out at the University, and the faculty web tools have sporadic uptimes. Fastest way to have faculty NOT use your tools? Have the system be down just ONCE when they want to use it. "It never works!" is what you'll get and they'll do it themselves from there on out.

Re:What it really shows

[speaker of the truth]

Is that choosing commercial or proprietary software based on the notion you get better support is a myth.

Given that OSS can ONLY make money from offering support (or by being sponsored by a large company) with all other things equal the likelihood is that the OSS people will offer better support, because unlike closed source companies the support is their bread and butter.

Re:Just goes to show...

[sYkSh0n3]

I think a lot of it has to do with going public. Instead of worrying about making a good product and turning a profit, they have to worry about INCREASING profit. It can never be good enough. They have to constantly make more and more money to keep the stockholders happy. Eventually, they have to screw the customer for the sake of the stockholder.

What did you expect

[aggles]

It is sad that Urchin (the product) is all but dead, but what did you expect? Google bought a Web analytics product to help sell ad-words. Its hosted version is free, has been much updated and is well worth the price you pay. Google is not deeply in the product business, except for their search engine appliance. It takes a huge infrastructure to compete with the leaders of Web analytics products and services, such as Omniture, WebTrends, Coremetrics, Visual Sciences and Unica. Its not in Google's business model to do this. What is really sad is that there are so few good web analytic products left. WebTrends, Unica (the old Sane NetTracker) and ClickTracks is about it. If you have been paying yearly support on the Urchin product to Google, you seriously need a lesson in dealing with software vendors. Oh wait - you just got one.

-aggles

Gone wrong?

[hhlost]

Saying that the acquisition went "terribly wrong" assumes that Google's true intention was to continue with support and updates as they supposedly said. Just like saying that the Bush Administration failed in Iraq assumes that the true intention was to bring peace, stability and democracy to that country.

Not a new story

[maggard]

Anyone remember Dodgeball.com [dodgeball.com]? Google bought 'em when they were hot, everyone expected great things, check out their founder's resignation letter [flickr.com].

Google is competitive, outside and inside. If a product doesn't have a strong voice, strong support, it'll get starved. There are lots of examples of this, where Google (or Yahoo or any other company) buys a smaller company and it's products just kinda evaporate.

Sometimes it is truly a mismatch in cultures. Other times the folks coming in get sucked into 'more interesting' projects and their original ones languish. Once in a while the goal of buying the company was to shut it down, or at least to deny it's benefits to a competitor.

Whatever the case whenever a buyout happens smart folks immediately put together transition plans, if only contingency ones.

In my career I've had CA buy and rape/pillage/burn (not always in that order!) any number of products we've depended upon. Yahoo! also has a record of ingesting, partially digesting, then eventually burping up a barely recognizable (and rarely for the better) version of the original service. Same for Amazon - anyone else recall Firefly, PlanetAll, A9 with street-views, etc.?

Urchin is just one more example of why committing to a product or service that isn't it's owner's primary interest is a risky gamble. Never assume the status quo; companies & priorities change and that's how inattentive customers get caught out.

Re:Why PHB's go with commercial services

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand why companies prefer commercial solutions.

Oh, I understand all right. To some degree, it is CYA maneuvering. But once you peer beneath the veneer of "support" what are you really getting? Urchin is a good example because it is a fancy web-log reporting tool. Not necessarily beyond the capabilities of a few internal developers, or other existing tools in the OSS world.

I have choices. Like suing them

See, this is exactly the kind of problem with Career Management attitudes today. You yourself indicated that your final solution is to spend more money lawyering up, and even more money on an 'alternate' solution. The only real rationale for the purchase is to have someone else to yell at.

And PHBs keep getting away with it, because nobody seems to call them out on all the money they waste on empty promises and vaporware.

Security issue with Urchin!!

[naasking]

For those companies that use Urchin, note that there is a potential security vulnerability that I came across on a copmany's ordering page just a few days ago. The company, who shall remain nameless, has since taken my suggestion and closed the security hole, but I don't know how many more ordering screens use Urchin in the same way.

The problem is thus:

1. The ordering screen where you enter your VISA card number is loaded over https
2. The ordering screen includes the urchin.js [google-analytics.com] script file, but this file is loaded over unsecured http
3. This means that urchin.js could be replaced in transit with another script which could steal your personal info by, for instance, changing the form you are submitting to point to another server.

In this case, the Firefox "lock" icon displays an error: "Warning: Contains unauthenticated content". Unfortunately, this is very easy to miss. I only spotted it because I use the Petname Toolbar [mozilla.org], which prevents phishing and spoofing. The toolbar would not let me set a petname for this site, because the unsecured content could literally change anything on the page, so it wasn't safe. If you don't already have the Petname Toolbar installed, I highly recommend that you install it.

Urchin could close this hole if they allowed urchin.js to be loaded over https, but the file isn't available over a secured link. To anyone using urchin.js, make sure you don't include that file on your secured pages.

What's even more disheartening, is that this site was verified as "hacker safe" by ScanAlert [scanalert.com]; missing such an obvious hole really decreases my confidence in their testing methods.

Re:Superior free software support

[Eivind Eklund]

Most companies only need functionality from software, not rights - their strategic advantage. Contributing back to the core open source project will usually give tactical advantages, such as other people maintaining the code. The competitors usually don't even run the same software.

This even goes for proprietary derivates of BSD licensed open codebases; FreeBSD has gotten a ton of stuff (e.g, the SCSI stack, the netgraph stack) from proprietary derivates.

Eivind.

Re:Superior free software support

[Anonymous Coward]

You're really still not very good at this Trolling lark are you?