The big news this week, is the event at Google headquarters to demonstrate their much hyped operating system on Thursday, which promises to be the first major confrontation in the new browser war which was triggered by the release of Google Chrome earlier this year.

The relationship between the major players in the online world has always been described in overtly bellicose terms, but in the continuing fight for online supremacy, the battle ground has shifted from the traditional Battle of the Browser, to a fully-fledged global World Wide Web War. Google is making a bold move in challenging Microsoft’s OS dominance, but the old war horse still has some fight left, as evidenced by Microsoft moving in on Google’s search dominance with Bing and their deal with Yahoo.

The interweb is a moveable feast and the fight for innovation and market share is changing the way we think about computers and the Cloud. The lines between hardware and software, platforms and applications, browsers and OS are becoming less distinct, largely thanks to the efforts of the major players – Microsoft, Google and Apple – to trump each other. This time around, however, it appears the ultimate goal is not simply to have the most-downloaded browser, but to create a whole new paradigm for how we use the internet.

Like all software, the trick to increasing your user base is to build a good product – if it’s usable then people will use it. Duh. Love them or loathe them, MS make a perfectly good browser; whether it can be considered “the best” depends on your perspective (or your loyalty). But at the end of the day when it comes to browsers the rules of engagement have changed. Earlier this year the European Commission sent a Statement of Objections to Microsoft, outlining their belief that “Microsoft’s tying of its web browser Internet Explorer to its dominant client PC operating system Windows infringes the EC Treaty rules on abuse of a dominant position” in an attempt to get IE unbundled from Windows or force Microsoft to bundle other browsers with their OS. Notably, Windows 7 now ships in Europe without IE, which needs to be downloaded separately. The EU, it seems, is a PC…they talked and Microsoft listened. Time will tell what impact, if any, this has on European usage stats for IE.

As much as I deplore any anti-competitive behaviour and abuse of power by market heavy-weights, I have to wonder whether this move was even necessary. I’ve had a version of IE on practically every computer I’ve ever owned but I’ve rarely used it, as in my opinion it’s not a particularly good browser: it’s bloated, doesn’t conform to open standards, and discourages stable customisation. Despite claims to the contrary, Microsoft are not renowned for rapid response to user complaints about their products.  Of course, this could be said of any competitive company, but it’s when things get anti-competitive that it becomes problematic. There’s an old adage: “You reap what you sow”, and it’s interesting to see IE losing market share to an upstart like Google who built their empire with free software, and the phoenix-like Firefox, the vengeful son of Netscape Navigator, a product Microsoft arguably helped to destroy.

I, for one, am greatly anticipating Thursday’s announcement. Professionally, it heralds a significant shift in the landscape of user experience and human-computer interaction. Personally, I love a gimmick and am always an early-adopter of new software particularly when it’s free. I’ve been using Chrome since it first came out and I love it, not simply because it’s gimmicky but because it’s a great browser. It was developed in direct response to well-known complaints about deficiencies in existing browsers. It’s fast, customisable, responsive and solid. Google clearly want people to use their products so they’re investing a lot of energy (and presumably money) in understanding what users want. If the uptake of Chrome, the simplicity of Gmail, and the impressions of WAVE are anything to go by, the Google OS promises to be a cracker.

Of course, operating systems are a completely different beast to browsers or search engines. The definition of “best” is subjective to say the least and as developers have gradually come to realise the importance of a good customer experience, a “winner takes all” mentality diverts attention away from what should be the real goal of any software vendor: making a better product. Sure, you can actively kill your competitors’ product through monopolies or prohibitive patent licence fees or frivolous law suits, but why not put all that energy and money into your own product and kill them by making it better than theirs? That way, in the words of those great peace-makers, Hot Chocolate: “Everyone’s a winner, baby…that’s the truth.”

An interesting report was published recently by E-consultancy that gives a useful insight into the state of play of the web analytics industry here in the UK. They surveyed around 700 people from “practitioners”, agencies consultancies and vendors around a number of themes including the use of analytics within organisations, the amount of investment being made and the use that people are making of the data that has been invested in.

When asked how many web analytics tool they were using within their business over 50% of people said they were using two systems or more. Quite often the scenario was that a company was using a paid-for tool and then were using Google Analytics as well. Relatively few organisations were using Google Analytic exclusively. This is a trend that I have observed as well, an organisation has a system from one of the major vendors and then also deploys Google Analytics “to see what it is like” because it’s free. This result throws up some interesting questions like: “is this a good idea or not?”. One the one hand you can argue that since it’s not costing anything, then what’s the problem? Maybe Google Analytics does some things better than the system that you already have in place. On the other hand software like Google Analytics might be free to buy but it’s not free to implement (that takes time and effort) nor is it free to maintain (that takes time and effort too). Given that many organisations find it challenging to properly implement and configure one web analytics tool, does it make sense to try and manage two?

The other thing that struck me about this is that two systems will inevitably been giving different results. So which one do you believe? There’s a saying that a man with two watches can never tell the time. I can understand organisation wanting to try out different tools but at the end of the day I feel its best to stick with one and make sure that it’s giving you what you need.

There was some good news from this report about the adoption of other tools, particularly Voice of the Customer tools. Over 60% of organisations said that they looked at customer survey data. I think that if this survey had been done a couple of years ago the number would have been a lot lower. It’s good to see that businesses are beginning to realise that you can’t measure the effectiveness of the digital marketing strategy just by looking at data that comes out of a web analytics tools and that you need other data, particularly customer insight data to fully understand what is going on.

There are some worrying signs from the report. Organisations admit that they are still often not tying up their data collection strategy to their business objectives and relatively few said that they were definitely getting actionable insights from their web analytics. Quite a number thought that a lot of the data they had wasn’t particularly useful for decision making purposes and the clue to the reasons why came when you looked at the resourcing of their web analytics programme. 45% of respondents didn’t have a dedicated web analyst and when you look at where the money is being spent, the biggest chunk is usually on the technology rather than the resources to extract the value from the technology. So it’s hardly surprising that organisations are finding they are struggling to get insight from their web analytic programme that leads to better decision making.

The signs from the report suggest that there is progress being made in the UK but more vision is required at the right levels of organisations to tie their business strategy and the measurement strategy together. Reasons often cited as being a major barrier to having an effective online measurement strategy included lack of coordination, lack of senior level buy-in, budget and resources rather than problems with the technologies. And I think that if there is a difference between what is happening over here on this side of the Atlantic to what is happening in the US, it is probably more to do with those factors than anything else. For those of you in the UK and the rest of Europe, it’s worth taking a look at the report and seeing how you benchmark.

This post originally appeared on Applied Insights’ blog. Foviance acquired Applied Insights in November 2008, with Neil Mason joining us as Director of Analytical Consulting. As part of this acquisition, we’ve incorporated Applied Insights’ blog into our own.

The answer is probably yes. There, that was easy enough.

But then it gets a bit trickier, the questions start piling up. Like:

• What would a European WAA look like?
• How would it be organised?
• How would it work (or not) along side the existing WAA?
• What kind of legal status would it take?
• How would it be funded?

And probably a whole lot more that I haven’t thought of yet.

I have to declare an interest here. As a Board member on the Web Analytics Association, my responsibility is for “International”. I think last year was the first year that a Director on the Board had responsibility for “International”, though there has always been an International Committee ably co-chaired by Vicky Brock and Steve Jackson. Vicky, Steve and others have done a great job over the years helping to get activity happening at the local level in markets around the world. When I came onto the Board a year ago I agreed with Steve and Vicky that our priorities should be to continue to expand our international reach and also to look for ways to deliver more value to our international members.

A year on, have we done as much as we would have liked? Probably not. We are all volunteers, doing this is our own time. Most of us run our own businesses but I’m amazed at the amount of time that people do put in around the world on a volunteer basis.

Have we made any progress? Yes, we have. We have a new structure in place on the International Committee that should allow us to expand without losing focus and coordination. We have expanded into new markets by appointing country managers in places such as France, Spain, Russia, Argentina and Brazil. We are looking at how we can expand our activities into Asia. We are working on the structures and processes which will enable us to better help volunteer activity on the ground.

Could we be doing more? Absolutely. And it is a real case of “many hands making light work”. We need people to step up to the plate and get involved. I know it can be frustrating that sometimes we don’t seem to react in real time but as I said before that as a volunteer organisation it can take time to have the meetings, make the calls, to come to the decisions.

So back to the question? Does Europe need its own WAA? The answer is still “probably” but, the reality is that at this moment in time I don’t know. There is no doubt that International representation is getting stronger within the WAA. In 2006 there were no European Directors on the Board, in 2007 there were two. In 2008 hopefully more! As someone who spent many years working in the European divisions of US companies, I am well aware of the frustrations that can cause! I do think though that the WAA is becoming more internationally orientated and this debate about a European WAA is a great one to have. For me the next step is to work out how we get to the point of decision. There’s a lot of work to be done finding out what’s the best thing to do and how best to do it. We’ll be kicking that process off in San Francisco next week. After that I am sure we will be looking for all the help we can get! If you’re interested in helping out with the International activities and development of the WAA, let me know.