As I’ve mentioned before (somewhere), Google has historically held itself back from using cookies too aggressively to tie search behavior to user IDs that could allow for next-generation behavioral targeting… as echoed in this Reuters story about them.

Color me a little skeptical on this fact, though — I think that Google’s valuation can’t be justified unless the market believes that it will be able to leverage this data to better target and optimize online advertising, that it’s economics of “data scale” won’t allow it to remove some of the current advertising market inefficiencies.

I’ve heard unsubstantiated claims about Google using data gathered from the Google Desktop search product to produce all kinds of interesting addressable market data on users - so who knows what else will happen. Google has certainly held back on some of the more advanced cookie-based features when it comes to their Adsense “adserving”, but as they have built, will integrate (or get rid of) the Doubleclick serving platforms, and build an exchange (or really, another larger ad network depending on what you believe re: the Doubleclick ad exchange) I think it becomes impossible to avoid getting deeper into the cookie and data exchange business.

It’s a lot easier to shift the lines of “what is evil” when everyone else is doing it… and everyone else is/will be doing it.

I’ve been using the free Google Analytics package and have found it to be very reliable and feature-rich. It’s more than enough for most small firms’ needs. I’ve worked with Webtrends over the years and have some clients who use it; some of their needs certainly justify it, but still it is difficult to keep justifying it if when you login in the morning you see something like this:

“On demand” indeed! It makes you ask questions about just how disruptive Google can be once it NOT ONLY gives away for free (read: ad-supported) services that companies charge consumers OR businesses for, but also is able to be more reliable (jury still out on this) with their enhanced back-end resources and data centers. We’ll see.