Microsoft ‘Gatineau’ sneak peek

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So, some screenshots of the interface for beta 1 of our web analytics product (codenamed ‘Gatineau’) have slipped out onto the web, courtesy of Dave Naylor. Dave attended our adChamps briefing in London a couple of weeks ago where he saw a demo of the software and spoke with my colleague Justin (who did a sterling job of flying to London at less than 24 hours’ notice when I had to cancel because of another engagement). Not quite sure how he got these images (we were planning to make an announcement ourselves soon), but… hey. At least gives me a chance to clear up a couple of things:

Beta date
Beta 1 of Gatineau will likely hit the web later this summer. If you’d like to participate in the beta, please fill out the online beta request form, but please note that this will be a limited beta and so you may have to wait to be admitted. I’m not going to make any promises around how long that wait might be. If you’ve already e-mailed us, no need to do so again – we know who you are.

The beta is a work-in-progress. We’re planning to add more reports to the product before we consider it “done” (whatever that means in this day and age).

Demographic data
One of the reasons we wanted to wait for our own announcement around the beta functionality is because we wanted to explain where we get our demographic data from. Beta 1 will include the ability to segment data by both age and gender buckets, so you can get more of an idea of what kind of visitors you have. Questions are already being asked on Dave’s blog about where we get this data from; the answer is that we do get this information from users’ Live ID (formerly known as Microsoft Passport) profiles, but I would stress that we get this information anonymously, and there is no use of PII (Personally Identifiable Information, such as name or e-mail address) in the product.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post a more comprehensive explanation of this process very soon (in fact, I started writing one in this post, but halfway through my implant started bleeping so I hit the delete key before my brain stem was fried). Will be back once I’ve checked with Legal. In the meantime, if you have any comments on this or any other aspect of the product, you know where the comments box is.

30 thoughts on “Microsoft ‘Gatineau’ sneak peek”

  5. Gatineau and that pesky demographic data

    Last week SEO guru David Naylor posted some leaked screen shots of Gatineau, the adCenter Web analytics tool we previously mentioned in January. They are pretty much what one would expect for a Google Analytics competitor except for one that has…

  7. Oh right. Based on your stellar track record, that’s all fine then. As long as you said it’s ok and anonymous, it must be, right?
    Is there an opt out. Or did the fact that not everyone wants to be mined like this not cross your mind? Yes, I know its in your EULA. But it seems like once any data enters the Microsoft black hole it is there forever. I’d want my account the hell deleted from your systems if this ever goes anywhere.

  9. Aw, bollocks. That snide remark was of course aimed at james and not Michael.
    Crappy design elements FTW!

  11. What I am interested in is can we use this with SharePoint 2007 sites hosted in a farm and get realistic results? The site usage reports that come with SharePoint are not that great, and are horrendously slow.

  12. Why does Microsoft insist on creating something just to compete and grab some of the market share? I know it’s still just a beta but three-dimensional graphs have less meaning than simple two-dimensional ones. Look a the screenshot for male/female stats. All it reveals is that there are some vague differences. Actually determining what those differences are is impossible.
    More widget-like options does not equal better software.
    The biggest questions so far should be cost and USEFUL features. Google Analytics is free. If Gatineau isn’t free, why use it over Google? What does it do that Google Analytics does not?
    Regarding Windows Live ID, why does Microsoft insist on it so much? Passport failed so they renamed it to something more confusing. Now they’re going to try to use data from it in their stats? Seems too fishy. They claim that no personal information will be gathered and while that may be true, it’s not accurate by any means. The stats aren’t just about gender and age. They’re about gender and age of those who have a Windows Live account. Not everyone does so it’s not a true representation of the audience. It’s a meaningless segment of it.
    Why would someone want to ditch Google Analytics, for example, and start all over with Gatineau? Unless Google and Microsoft make some deal where they can import/export data between stats packages (like that’s going to happen…), why switch? It’s bad enough that it’s not possible to import stats into Google. To start all over again is too much of a hassle.

  13. Gatineau – Microsofts Antwort auf Google Analytics

    Die Webanalyse Software mit der Microsoft Googles Dienst Analytics den Rang ablaufen mchte hrt auf den Namen Gatineau. In den letzten Tagen sind erste Screenshots verffentlich und Details zur Beta 1 verffentlicht worden.
    Auf de…

  14. There must be much more than just gender/age data to convince webmasters of the need for migrating to Gatineau. Especially knowing that Microsoft mainly focuses on Internet Explorer features, and provides only limited set for “alternative” browsers like Firefox.

  15. Taking Microsoft’s Gatineau for a spin later this Summer

    More information about Microsofts Gatineau analytics platform has been leaked since I wrote about it two days ago in Gatineau first glimpses care of WebAnalyticsBook.com. Ive seen a bit of talk about it at the Web Analytics Association&…

  16. Ian et al,
    I for one welcome another large player entering the analytics market with an end-user targeted tool. As we saw with the Urchin play from Google, the whole industry benefited from the ‘zeitgeist’ buzz that ran round the web on release.
    As a marketeer I love the idea of native segmentation by selected demogs, but as an analyst I worry about the integrity of this data and finally as fully paid up member of the ‘I ain’t paranoid, they really are out to get me club (well loose affiliation)’I worry about the potentially pernicious (mis)use of horizontally harvested user data.
    So I guess I’m on the fence, but looking forward to Gattaca, sorry, Gatineau in beta as it will move us all forward again.

  18. A move from MSN

    I am just browsing the net about some issues and news about search engine and caught some attention about this event from Microsoft. This is about a service similar to Google Analytics that they called Gatineau according to different site…

  20. OpenWebAnalytics

    Google Analytics – е много популярен инструмент за следене на статистиката на сайтове. Този сайт също го използва/
    Корпорацията също разработва п�

  23. Request Microsoft Project Gatineau Web Analytics Invites

    Microsoft Project Gatineau is a new web analytics tool coming soon to challenge Google Analytics and other traffic statistics tracking tools. They are allowing limited number of testers in the Project Gatineau beta and you can request an invite.
    Ian Th…

  26. The site usage reports that come with SharePoint are not that great, and are horrendously slow.Regarding Windows Live ID, why does Microsoft insist on it so much? Passport failed so they renamed it to something more confusing.

  27. The site usage reports that come with SharePoint are not that great, and are horrendously slow.Regarding Windows Live ID, why does Microsoft insist on it so much? Passport failed so they renamed it to something more confusing.

  28. There must be much more than just gender/age data to convince webmasters of the need for migrating to Gatineau. Especially knowing that Microsoft mainly focuses on Internet

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