Google to release global browser based plug-in for Analytics

“As an enterprise-class web analytics solution, Google Analytics not only provides site owners with information on their website traffic and marketing effectiveness, it also does so with high regard for protecting user data privacy,” wrote Amy Chang, Google Analytics group product manager.

Google Analytics is a tool for tracking and monitoring traffic on sites that provides detailed information about the visitors to any particular Web site.

However, "We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics," added Chang.

According to market experts Google’s free service Google Analytics is an excellent tool to monitor the number of visits by a visitor on a Web site.

Google blog also mentioned that its engineers are in the final stages of testing the new opt-out feature for the service.

Google wants to provide more privacy to its users
According to market experts Google’s free service Google Analytics is an excellent tool to monitor the number of visits by a visitor on a Web site.

Though, the tool has been criticized by some experts who believe that Google Analytics infringes user privacy by collecting data without user’s permission or knowledge.

Joe Stanhope, an analyst at Forrester Research, believes that there are tools already in existence for consumers if they want to opt-out of Web analytics tools and not many care about these tools in general.

"These tools are available, yet Web analytics and Web measurement tools have marched on. Most people say they care, but don't seem to care that much. Of all the privacy violations and concerns, getting tracked on a Web site is not the biggest deal. But then Google analytics doesn't track personally identifiable information," said Stanhope.

According to the data collected by the University of California, Berkeley, Google Analytics is no small service as roughly around 71 percent of 400,000 top domains were found to be using the service till March 2009.

Google’s privacy lawsuit woes
Google’s has for long struggled with privacy issues as whenever it launches a service it runs into privacy conflicts.

However, this year particularly Google has been severely criticized for invading users privacy with its recently released Buzz service.

Just recently a 24 year-old Harvard Law School student sued Google, alleging that its new social networking site Buzz invaded her privacy.

Although Google had tried to combat the situation by making some changes to the service but many users are still not satisfied with all the new changes.