Microsoft Gatineau at Emetrics

One of the most anticipated sessions at the Emetrics Optimization Summit in Washington was the demonstration of Microsoft’s very own analytics, Gatineau. Ian Thomas, who was giving the presentation, announced that beta accounts will be released very shortly, however the original beta release was supposed to be released at the end of . Microsoft will be integrating into AdCenter similar to what Google Analytics does with Adwords.

One of the coolest features which I noticed was the ability to measure the performance of individual webpage sections giving a whole new level of granularity. Microsoft hopes to takeaway some of Google Analytics’ market share, however I don’t think this is the easiest of tasks. Looking at the initial screenshots of Gatineau you can see that they are also implementing an ajax based user interface, however it currently doesn’t have polish of Google Analytics’ interface.

If Microsoft expects to compete with Google Analytics and other products, they are going to have to come out with something unique and exciting. They will have to do something similar to what Google Analytics did when it initially replaced Urchin. Microsoft has had nearly 2 years to analyze the top features and issues that Google Analytics posseses in order to capitalize on them.