Recently, Google introduced introduced its new product: Webaccelerator. Webaccelerator is a local web proxy that fetches web pages from Google cache instead of website itself, it also does prefetching (i.e. tries to preventively download pages that you are likely to jump to).
That made me think: why G00gle would release yet another "Web accelerator" while there are literally hords of free and commercial products that do more or less the same, but in a different way? I guess the reason behind this may be a little bit scary for web site owners.
Some time ago, Google announced acquisition of web statistics company Urchin. Search engines, especially google, are now the real portal to the Internet. One of the most interesting parts in web statistics is "keywords" section, which shows keywords visitors use to navigate to a site.
If information is retrieved by Google cache servers, web masters will not know who actually fetches their pages. To get statistics they should go to Google. And Google will give them these statistics... for a fee.
And I doubt someone will dare to retaliate with banning Google cache servers from fetching pages. "Oh, you banned cache server IP ranges? Grreat, our googolebot will not see you in another couple of years".
Google has you.
Right now Google has only one serious revenue stream (though very thick one): AdWords. Search appliances bring relatively small revenue, and Google probably does even know yet how to get revenue out of other projects like Google News. As a corporation, it has to be in a constant search (pun intended) of new revenue stream. My conjecture that web statistics will be that stream.
Posted in Web frolov's blog | add new comment
Submitted by frolov on Wed, 2005-05-04 17:49.
