
Ask HN: Why is Google Analytics free? - ClosureCowboy
What does Google gain by offering Analytics for free? Do they harvest each users' sites' usage information?
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staunch
Google Analytics is a way for Google to buy massive amounts of web traffic
data in exchange for some pretty charts.

They use the data if sharing is enabled, which is the default mode:
[http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer...](http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=87515#0.1.1_4)

It's strategically useful for them to have so much visibility into the web.

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michaelperalta
I read an article pertaining to a similar topic to this about why, for the
most part, all the services that Google offers the public are free and it
really is the fact that Google, at its heart, is a marketing firm first. Every
feature they offer you is designed not to generate profit so much as it is to
keep you with them. By giving away their services for free it obviously
increases their brand name, encourages brand loyalty, but also levels the
playing field. They set the bar by offering these services for free. No one
will pay for a service that is at least comparably offered for free. For this
reason if Google makes gmail free then every other website has to offer their
mail services for free, the same goes with Google Calendars, and all of the
other apps they offer. Why would they want everyone to offer their apps for
free? Because then the difference between them and Yahoo or Bing or any other
site is on marketing abilities and few companies in the world come close to
challenging Google's marketing capabilities.

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mattgratt
Allegedly they don't take information from analytics. (Most of the important
metrics they could probably get from something like G-bounces (when you press
the back button and go back to the results page) or other sources like data
from Chrome or social data.)

It's free b/c it helps marketers measure and optimize their Adwords spend, and
justify it to their managers. (Most search advertising requires cumbersome
custom tagging - in Google Analytics, Adwords is basically integrated
automatically or with one click.)

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benologist
It gives them direct insight into a whole lot of websites that
don't/can't/won't use AdSense.

I don't know if they actually use the data for anything but I've read it's not
used at all for search results.

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polyfractal
Brett Cosby (founder of Urchin / Google Analytics) was interviewed by the
Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leader seminar. He touches on why Analytics
is free, as well as a weath of other interesting information:

<http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1905>

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sneak
It drives sales for AdWords.

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revorad
To sell more ads. That's the answer for why most things online are free.

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ddemchuk
Because they mine the everliving shit out of the data for improving ranking
algos and getting people to buy more ads

