A Google Blunder- the Sad Story of Urchin 164
Anenome writes "Google has a track record of buying startups and integrating them into its portfolio. But sometimes those acquisitions go terribly wrong, as Ars Technica argues has been the case with Google's 2005 purchase of web-analytics firm Urchin Software Corp. 'In the wake of Google's purchase of the company, inquiring customers (including Ars Technica) were told that support and updates would continue. Companies that had purchased support contracts were expecting version 6 any day, including Ars. What really happened is this: Google focused its attention on Google Analytics, put all updates to Urchin's other products on the back burner, and rolled out a skeleton support team. Everyone who forked over for upgrades via a support contract never got them, even though things weren't supposed to have changed. The support experience has been awful. Since the acquisition, we have had two major issues with Urchin, and neither issue was solved by Google's support team. In fact, with one issue, we were helped up until the point it got difficult, and then the help vanished. The support team literally just stopped responding.'"
Just goes to show... (Score:1)
But at least Brin and co. have their private airstrip now
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Re:Just goes to show... (Score:4, Funny)
What it really shows (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What it really shows (Score:5, Insightful)
Superior free software support (Score:3, Interesting)
[ BTW: I guess most people "make money" on free software not by support or sponsorship, by being paid in advance by the customer for the development. I know I do. ]
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This even goes for proprietary derivates of BSD licensed open codebases; FreeBSD has gotten a ton of stuff (e.g, the SCSI stack, the netgraph stack) from proprietary derivates.
Eivind.
The other myth: proprietary model and innovation (Score:2)
In theory, no company would do this to the better of two products, but in practice it works out differently. The company I work for has been on a buying binge for the last 10 years. They now own almost all of the products in several vertical markets. That is, all except the clear
Re:The other myth: proprietary model and innovatio (Score:2)
Generally when I h
Unlike? Are you kidding? (Score:2)
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If anything, OSS companies would try to oversell you on support, keep you on the phone longer, and result in shoddier software which require you to keep calling back.
Wouldn't that be a more likely corporate evolution of a company that ONLY obtains revenue from Support contracts??
On the other hand, they are supporting a totally open product. If they dick around with you too much, you could always get support elsewhere or fix it in-house.
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Two sides to every story (Score:2, Insightful)
Breach. (Score:3, Insightful)
It looked to me that they signed a contract. Therefore, wouldn't it be breach of contract and be actionable in court?
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It looked to me that they signed a contract. Therefore, wouldn't it be breach of contract and be actionable in court?
Nope. From the article:
"Them's the breaks," as they say: the support contracts never guaranteed upgrades.
It looks to me like they never got the upgrade promise in writing, and now they're whining that Google is failing to acknowledge a verbal promise made by the old dev. team. To which I say, "So what?" Isn't the first rule of corporate dealings, "Get it in writing or don't get it a
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Around these parts if someone promises something verbally, not only is it enforceable in court, its considered a lie and bad character to then go back on the promise.
It is indeed bad character on Google's part to go back on a verbal agreement like this. However, to get court enforcement for an agreement like this, you have to have something to backup your hearsay evidence. Saying, "But they said they would have an upgrade," isn't enough. If Ars can produce an e-mail, or a letter, or even a recorded pr
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Isn't this exactly the same as Microsoft's Software Assurance troubles? All those companies bought contracts for upgrades for their software for a set period of time, then Microsoft never actually released any new products, t
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In that case, the upgrade was promised in writing, and shipped as promised. Because there weren't any specifications on the the quality of the upgrade, Microsoft was free to sacrifice quality to get the upgrade out the door. Besides, Software Assurance was supposed to be more like insurance than a contract. If Microsoft released an upgrade during the contract, then you got the upgrade for free (or reduced cost, I'm not sure). But I don't think there was any clause stating that Microsoft had to release a
Re:Two sides to every story (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Two sides to every story (Score:5, Interesting)
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Regardless, if the organization fails to perform its contractual obligations, then there are methods for dealing with that. It is the responsibility of the organization to keep track of its obligations and it is the customer's responsibility to be prepared to deal with an organization tha
yep (Score:2)
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> "In summary: hey got "forked-over" after forking over."
Of course, if it were OSS, it could just be forked ...
Anyone got a link to the complete specs of what their log analysis tool does?
Let's wait for Google Urchin 6, then ... (Score:2, Informative)
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Buyouts (Score:5, Informative)
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Ars is abusing their publishing privilege by whining about something that didn't go their way. Hardly news.
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Uncertainty (Score:5, Insightful)
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> "What companies like Google don't realize is that it's the uncertainty that kills customers. Most of us won't really care if you're going to buy Urchin, move all the best pieces to Google Analytics, and then kill it off - just tell us what the fuck you are doing so we can plan accordingly. Dicking people around by pretending to support what you know will be a dead product is a good way to get people to hold grudges against you."
You must be new here; it worked for Microsoft ...
In Soviet Googlestan,
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This.
Not that Google doesn't realize this, but they dropped the ball in this case. We have a few major systems being rolled out at the University, and the faculty web tools have sporadic uptimes. Fastest way to have faculty NOT use your tools? Have the system be down just ONCE when they want to use it. "It never works!" is what you'll get and they'll do it themselves from there on out.
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What you don't realize is that, from Google's perspective, you're not the customer.
Google wants to data-mine the Web to better sell ads. Convincing sites to run their analytics through Google's hosted solution gives them a gold mine of data to use for this purpose.
In other words, the stats software is just bait that they can use to get people to provide data they can use to better serve their real customers --
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The problem is, these customers did not get what they paid for, and that is why they are upset. I can't say that I blame them.
Wouldn't you be mad if you paid for something and didn't get it, or if the company half-assed their commitments?
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If anyone would know about an Urchin (Score:2)
Re:If anyone would know about an Urchin (Score:4, Informative)
A sea urchin is an Echinoderm, like starfish and sea cucumbers.
An anemone is a Cnidaria, like coral and jelly fish.
Imagine obligatory wiki links here.
jfs
Re:If anyone would know about an Urchin (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If anyone would know about an Urchin (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:If anyone would know about an Urchin (Score:4, Funny)
It was April the 41st, being a quadruple leap year
I was driving in downtown Atlantis
My Barracuda was in the shop, so I was in a rented Stingray, and it was overheating
So I pulled into a Shell station They said I'd blown a seal
I said, "Fix the damn thing and leave my private life out of it, okay pal?"
While they were doing that I walked over to a place called the oyster bar -- a real dive
But I knew the owner, he used to play for the Dolphins
I said, "Hi, Gil!!!"
You hafta yell, he's hard of herring
CHORUS:
Think I had a wet dream Cruisin' through the Gulf Stream Oooh-ooh-ooh-ooh Wet dream...
Gil was also down on his luck
Fact is, he was barely keeping his head below water
I gullied up to the sandbar He poured the usual
Rusty snail, hold the grunion, shaken, not stirred
With a peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich on the side -- heavy on the mako
I slipped him a fin -- on porpoise I was feeling good
I even dropped a sand dollar in the box for Jerry's Squids -- for the halibut
Well, the place was crowded We were packed in like sardines
They were all there to listen to the big band sounds of Tommy Dorsal -- what sole
Tommy was rockin' the place with a very popular tuna -- "Salmon Chanted Evening"
And the stage was surrounded by screaming groupers
Probably there to see the bass player
One of them was this cute little yellowtail
And she's giving ME the eye
So I figure, this is my chance for a little fun
You know -- a piece of Pisces
But she said things I just couldn't fathom
She was too deep, and seemed to be under a lot of pressure
Boy, could she drink
She drank like a... she drank A LOT...
I said, "What's your sign?" She said, "Aquarium" I said, "GREAT!!! Let's get tanked!"
I invited her up to my place for a little midnight bait
I said, "C'mon baby, it'll only take a few minnows"
She threw me that same old line
"Not tonight -- I got a haddock"
And she wasn't kiddin' either, 'cuz in came the biggest, meanest looking haddock I'd ever seen come down the pike
He was covered with mussels
He came over to me, he said, "Listen shrimp -- don't you come trolling around here"
What a crab This guy was steamed -- I could see the anchor in his eyes
I turned to him, I said, "Abalone -- You're just being shellfish"
Well, I knew it was going to be trouble, and so did Gil, 'cuz he was already on the phone to the cods
The haddock hits me with a sucker punch
I catch him with a left hook He eels over
It was a fluke, but there he was, lying on the deck, flat as a mackerel
Kelpless
I said, "Forget the cods, Gil, this guy's gonna need a sturgeon"
Well, the yellowtail was impressed with the way I landed her boyfriend
She came over to me, she said, "Hey big boy, you're really a game fish"
"What's your name?"
I said, "Marlin"
Well from then on, we had a whale of a time
I took her to dinner
I took her to dance
I bought her a bouquet of flounders
And then I went home with her
And what did I get for my trouble?
A case of the clams
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 29.1).Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 30.1)
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You got me. It is Trawl Tuesday after all...
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FOSS losers (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes one wonder how many of these companies eschewed open-source solutions, in favor of expensive "supported" software.
Hopefully enough of these examples will eventually reach the tipping point where PHBs will finally begin to wonder what exactly they're getting for their money.
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Wait... So the company that doesn't want to worry about its own software, and therefore buys a support contract, will now be benefited by the "fix it yourself" nature of FOSS? I know the power of FOSS is being able to go into the code and alter/fix things that you don't like - but considering this company clearly doesn't want to have its own little team of coders doing something like that (hence buying the contract), what's the point?
More likely a rash of unsupportive developers will simply create room fo
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Suppose Urchin had been FOSS. It would have been forked by now, and the devs of the forked version would be offering support.
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Why PHB's go with commercial services (Score:3, Informative)
It makes one wonder how many of these companies eschewed open-source solutions, in favor of expensive "supported" software. Hopefully enough of these examples will eventually reach the tipping point where PHBs will finally begin to wonder what exactly they're getting for their money.
You don't understand why companies prefer commercial solutions.
If I buy services from a company and they fail to deliver, I have choices. Like suing them (example: breach of contract) and recovering damages. I can't do t
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I'd love to see examples where this has actually happened. Commercial software companies fail to deliver at the time. It's routine. And yet it's always the admins and the users in the company that bought it that end up having to "pay" for it.
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If I buy services from a company and they fail to deliver, I have choices. Like suing them (example: breach of contract) and recovering damages.
Awesome.
So riddle me this, batman. Users buy Urchin and also purchase a contract for support and upgrades. Urchin gets bought by Google, who breaches that contract by not releasing an upgrade, and failing to deliver support. Reminder: CUSTOMERS PAID FOR BOTH OF THEM!
Now, how come these customers aren't able to get any relief from the courts? How come their only recourse is to bitch about the problem on Slashdot?
I think that you'll find that in the Real World, if you pay for software/services in order t
On the bright side... (Score:2)
Here's the lowdown. (Score:5, Informative)
Google/Urchin provided support for a short while, and all was good. Then, Google/Urchin decided to outsource ALL support requests except major bugs. They "trained" authorized support personel from various companies, which are now listed under their resellers page. But, a good percentage of those people know jack about the inner working of Urchin. I feel sorry for them, honestly, because I doubt they were trained properly and there's very little solid documentation.
Urchin is EXTREMELY poorly documented. Want to know how to create your own report inside a profile? It's easy! Now, do you want to analyze some metric in a different way than Urchin does by default? Wow. Good luck. datamap.dm, I hardly knew thee. I still don't know it well, because there's very little documentation and zilch for examples about how the integral parts of the program work. Want to change how some
So yeah, Google is certainly at fault somewhat, but a lot of the issues people have could have been resolved even prior to the acquirement of Urchin! Documentation will save us, or in it's absence damn us.
Another topic is that Urchin currently has two outstanding LARGE vulnerabilities, as published by US CERT. Google/Urchin was notified back in June or July about these security holes. They claimed a fix was in the works. It's now OCTOBER and they're totally silent on the issue. My support requests (directed directly at google, not at one of their support contractors) go unanswered. There hasn't been an update to the program in years. Google/Urchin is COMPLETELY silent about the Urchin standalone product.
I'm extremely happy that this is getting some public attention, because it bugs the bejeezus out of serious Urchin users.
Most online documentation vanished ... (Score:2, Interesting)
I too am happy this is getting some attention, as management needs to be reminded from time to time that no company is infallible. Even Google.
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OK, how do I request a major bug?
Sue! (Score:2, Insightful)
Are they finally evil? (Score:3, Insightful)
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So then, if I pat you on the head and kick your friend in the nuts, I am neutral and not evil, right? I am starting to get a little sick of Google getting a free pass. And to
What did you expect (Score:2, Insightful)
How to Fix Google Analytics (Score:3, Informative)
$ echo "127.0.0.1 www.googleanalytics.com" >>
Does the trick every time
Not Every Time (Score:3, Informative)
At any rate, I think that you'll find that the google analytics hostname is www.google-analytics.com (with a hyphen). I also think that the NoScript firefox plugin will p
Gone wrong? (Score:2, Insightful)
Who doesn't block them with NoScript? (Score:2)
Not a new story (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone remember Dodgeball.com [dodgeball.com]? Google bought 'em when they were hot, everyone expected great things, check out their founder's resignation letter [flickr.com].
Google is competitive, outside and inside. If a product doesn't have a strong voice, strong support, it'll get starved. There are lots of examples of this, where Google (or Yahoo or any other company) buys a smaller company and it's products just kinda evaporate.
Sometimes it is truly a mismatch in cultures. Other times the folks coming in get sucked into 'more interesting' projects and their original ones languish. Once in a while the goal of buying the company was to shut it down, or at least to deny it's benefits to a competitor.
Whatever the case whenever a buyout happens smart folks immediately put together transition plans, if only contingency ones.
In my career I've had CA buy and rape/pillage/burn (not always in that order!) any number of products we've depended upon. Yahoo! also has a record of ingesting, partially digesting, then eventually burping up a barely recognizable (and rarely for the better) version of the original service. Same for Amazon - anyone else recall Firefly, PlanetAll, A9 with street-views, etc.?
Urchin is just one more example of why committing to a product or service that isn't it's owner's primary interest is a risky gamble. Never assume the status quo; companies & priorities change and that's how inattentive customers get caught out.
Security issue with Urchin!! (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is thus:
1. The ordering screen where you enter your VISA card number is loaded over https
2. The ordering screen includes the urchin.js [google-analytics.com] script file, but this file is loaded over unsecured http
3. This means that urchin.js could be replaced in transit with another script which could steal your personal info by, for instance, changing the form you are submitting to point to another server.
In this case, the Firefox "lock" icon displays an error: "Warning: Contains unauthenticated content". Unfortunately, this is very easy to miss. I only spotted it because I use the Petname Toolbar [mozilla.org], which prevents phishing and spoofing. The toolbar would not let me set a petname for this site, because the unsecured content could literally change anything on the page, so it wasn't safe. If you don't already have the Petname Toolbar installed, I highly recommend that you install it.
Urchin could close this hole if they allowed urchin.js to be loaded over https, but the file isn't available over a secured link. To anyone using urchin.js, make sure you don't include that file on your secured pages.
What's even more disheartening, is that this site was verified as "hacker safe" by ScanAlert [scanalert.com]; missing such an obvious hole really decreases my confidence in their testing methods.
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A better idea would be to simply copy the js file to your local server; that way, clients would load the file over the https connection they already established to your server, and your page won't break if Google Analytics upgrade the contents of the file.
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Such an attack is quite trivial, and does not depend on cross-site scripting. The intercepted JS file simply needs to change the target of the form submission for every form on the page.
Standard Fare (Score:3, Informative)
Jotspot had the same problem. (Score:2)
Google is now ordinary (Score:2)
So, do you really want them to have any of your personal information? Your email? Your weblog? Anything you care about?
Re:I blame Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I blame Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, I'll bite...
Price doesn't have to be the only basis for competition. You can compete on service, and quality of product as well. To make an analogy, look at the retail market. Walmart competes on price, and its pretty successful. Target, knowing that it can't beat Walmart on price, competes by having brighter stores, and higher quality goods. Recently, Target has had a higher growth rate than Walmart, indicating that atmosphere and quality are criteria used by consumers to evaluate stores.
Similarly, you don't have to compete on price with Microsoft, and if you do, you'll probably lose. The trick is to go for quality and service - something that Google has been going for, except in this case. That's why the continued disregard of existing Urchin customers was a blunder - it put a black mark against Google's reputation for good customer service.
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Yeah, I have heard that those rocks [arstechnica.com] that Target sells are quite HiFi. However, I am not sure how "portable" they might be...
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I blame Microsoft too, for setting the standard. (Score:3, Informative)
Any of these ring a bell:
- Fox Software
- Bungie
- SubLogic
All of which made great programs that supported users of multiple platforms, MS bought them, said they were dedicated to enhacing the product across all platforms, made a half assed release or two and then dropped all other platforms due
Re:I blame Microsoft too, for setting the standard (Score:4, Funny)
Ah, yes. The first rule of Slashdot: if that I happen to like is critized, move focus to MS.
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Okay, now it's your turn.
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""Google principal scientist Krishna Bharat is settin up a Bangalore lab complete with colorful furniture, exercise balls, and a Yamaha organ -- like Google's Mountain View (Calif.) headquarters -- to work on core search-engine technology.""
Some people are lamenting the demise of the product Urchin, and may not know that they can pressure Google to revive it and uphold their end of the bargain, particularly
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<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-32013-5";
_udn = "slashdot.org";
urchinTracker();
</script>
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