Google Acquires Urchin

The search engine giant Google Inc. (www.google.com) today announced it has agreed to acquire Urchin Software Corporation, a San Diego, California based web analytics company.

Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions. Google anticipates that the acquisition will close before the end of April.

"We want to provide web site owners and marketers with the information they need to optimize their users' experience and generate a higher return-on-investment from their advertising spending," said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of product management, Google.

Urchin is a web site analytics solution used by web site owners and marketers to better understand their users' experiences, optimize content and track marketing performance.

The company tools are available as a hosted service, a software product and through large web hosting providers. These products are widely used on the Internet.

Google plans to make the Urchin's tools available to web site owners and marketers. The aim is to better enable the users to increase their advertising return on investment. The new addition is expected to make the users' web sites more effective.

Google's targeted advertising program, which is the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users.