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Microsoft today announced a public beta of Project Gatineau, their free Web analytics software that was revealed in January.
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 a nice breakout of Web site visitors by gender and the promise of a similar breakout by age, neither of which Google provides.
Given today’s Microsoft positioning on privacy, one can’t help but be curious as to how this demographic data was obtained. Microsoft’s Ian Thomas explains:
As Brad Stone observes at the NY Times, “There’s nothing like a little regulatory scrutiny to get Internet companies talking about privacy.” With the EU, the US Federal Trade Commission, and the US Congress getting into the act there’s plenty of scrutiny and Microsoft today followed Google with an announcement to deflect it.
The European Union data privacy Working Party has decided to expand its probe of search engine privacy practices beyond Google to include other Web Search services, which would seem to mean at least Yahoo and Microsoft’s Live Search.
