There is buzz going around that Microsoft will soon launch a free web analytics service named Gatineau. This free web analytics service will pose a competition to Google Analytics. The welcome page of Gatineau is up now although you cannot login just now.

Microsoft Analytics is expected to make up for the many shortcomings of Google Analytics. One such big shortcoming is the notion of inaccurate counts. This disadvantage becomes more apparent when compared to Urchin. This is very ironic as Urchin was bought by Google but dropped its main functionality. Other defects is that in the  analysis review there is no direct referral page. Lets hope that Microsoft has done their competition analysis well enough.