Google Has A Waiting List For Their Waiting List

Those of you in the thick of web analytics know what Google Analytics (affectionately or not, known as GA) has done for our industry. On the one hand, their free service may have put the future of some other analytics companies in question. On the other hand, Google has brought the issue of web analytics to the front and center, and has brought more publicity to this important area than, arguably, any other company could have.

I have a number of customers whom I’d like to see use GA. Sometimes, they are customers who really need Omniture or WebSideStory but don’t have the funding. Sometimes, they are just customers who need to prove their story to their management. And sometimes (like my blog) they/we aren’t going to spend money but just want to measure – it’s in our blood.

The Google team has started to send out more “invitations” to use their analytics, they say. They were so overwhelmed that they couldn’t handle the response at first, which seems reasonable — but — this is a company that just took .13 seconds to find 7.8 billion hits for me on the word “click.” What, they don’t scale?

Despite their claims, they now have a waiting list for their waiting list. It’s true – I just got the email from their Inside Analytics newsletter. Here’s how the newsletter ends, “If you’re interested in using Google Analytics but haven’t yet signed up to be notified when new accounts become available, you can do so here.” In other words, if you aren’t on the waiting list, click here so that you can find out when spots on the waiting list will become available.

How infuriating.

Robbin