Dave Naylor of ‘Can’t Beat a Good Rank’ has screenshots of the new Microsoft ‘Gatineau’ web traffic analytics tool on his blog.  It’s interesting that this late in the game, Microsoft believes they can make an impact.  Then throw in the fact that Google is giving the service away for free, and one’s got to question where the profit could possibly come from.

Heather Havenstein has a post up at Computerworld about the new tool, which should launch late this summer, but generally information seems to be lacking. 

One telling point in the screenshots is the “Microsoft AdCenter” logo…

As I have been telling analytics customers for some time, the second generation of Google Analytics competes well with the costly products like WebSideStory or even in some ways, Omniture.  It’s hard to see Microsoft making a meaningful play here with a first product release. 

Ian Thomas of Microsoft posted about the project, giving a basic glimpse at what we can expect…