hi, Loz, how are you?

I agree with the 'service provider' thing: some companies are happy saving some money & sorting things out for themselves; some are happier with a full service provider model. I actually think where Analytics is concerned there's a slight advantage in having set things up yourself at least once (or having an internal analyst who has done so) so that you have a rounded idea of what can be done & how things work from the ground up.

On the 'Google limit Analytics use to Adwords customers only' hypothesis, I don't think that will happen (or at least Google would be mad to do it) as it actually works as a sales tool for AdWords. Closing access would also go against of one of their big strategies, which is: find out as much as possible about as many web users as possible. On Google Analytics specifically, a few of the advantages for Google spreading it as wide as possible are that it tells them:

1. What searchers do post-search
2. Website usage outside of the search cyle (eg. type-ins/visits from emails/bookmarks, etc - something they had no visibility of previously)
3. What website owners are doing / Which sites they handle, etc
   
4. Which sites to pitch AdWords / AdSense to

Many of Google's other newer properties do the same kind of thing (eg. Google Reader, GMail, Personalised Homepage, Webmaster Central, etc). I'm sure this is an intentional strategy, so I'd be amazed if they ever limited access to Analytics.

True enough - but not sure the trouble was anything that Microsoft would have considered 'trouble'.
They  paid the $500M fine to the EU in 2004 and carried on anyway! (Windows media Player integration was the issue.)
They paid them some more last year. And carried on. And are still arguing with the EU.

For a list of MS litigation, start somewhere like the respected groklaw.net:
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107100653

Or Microsoft Vs USA over Internet Explorer: settled in 2001
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
but still in the news this week with judges questioning MS actions again:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003616887_microsoft14.html

So far, Google's 'do no evil' seems to be a good differentiator to Microsoft (their name is not entirely untarnished though).

Deri

Loz wrote:

Microsoft got into trouble packaging freebie products into their operating system.

I wonder if Google will ever get into a similar situation if its position is seen to be dominating the market.

Loz