After acquiring Urchin Software Corporation in March of 2005, Google took a big step forward in the web analytics world by re-branding and launching the service as the free Google Analytics product in November 2005. This was a huge step towards providing great analytics for web marketing, developers, and publishers alike through a single interface.

Now, just three short months later, we receive the news that Google has acquired MeasureMap, a great web analytics tool geared especially towards blogging.

Web analytics are a great resource for the online business, where they provide concrete data about the effectiveness of your site at acquiring and retaining visitors, allowing you to quickly analyze the data and turn it into monetizable marketing plans. But what value do they provide for the blogger?

There’s no question that many bloggers are undoubtedly addicted to their statistics. After all, there’s no better feeling than knowing that people are reading what you’re writing! Still, where most blogs are very much non-commercial, it seems that Google is adding to their analytics stable in a way that may be difficult to convert into revenue.

But then, Google is a company well known for providing great free software!