Google has slashed the pricing for the Web analytics service powered by Urchin, the company it acquired last month. Google dropped the price for Urchin On Demand from Google, as the product is now called, 60 percent to $199 per month, down from $495 per month. This is becoming a familiar pattern for Google. When it acquired Picasa, the photo-management software company last year, it immediately started giving away the software for free. From what we can tell, the new Urchin pricing could disrupt the economics of the middle-tier Web analytics market, forcing Urchin competitors such as WebTrends (which was just acquired itself) to rethink their pricing. Which makes us wonder, when does someone accuse Google of predatory pricing?
2 Comments
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pb said:
Considering the cost of software is near zero, it’d be hard to argue they are selling at a loss.
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Franklin said:
This version of Urchin is a service, not software per se. Regardless, how is the cost “near zero?” There are all sorts of embedded and fixed costs in running a software company. The cost of each copy of the software may be negligable, but labor and R&D costs need to be recouped.
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5:54 am
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