Without much fanfare—or even a simple announcement—Google has launched the free Google Analytics, designed to produce a range of data about your website. My efforts to try the service this morning were stymied. After logging in (using an existing Gmail account login), the site crunched and grinded for several minutes before producing a page informing me that “Google Analytics reporting is currently undergoing maintenance and will be available shortly. Your site traffic is being logged and you will be able to see the data after system maintenance has concluded.” No clue how long that’ll take.

In the meantime, ARS Technica has a good article about the service. The article, by Ryan Paul, notes, “It is still relatively difficult to get a good feel for the usefulness of the system at this point, but with over 80 pre-built reports, support for interactive report construction, and tracking for countless attributes, the amount of data it provides is downright prodigious.” Whether that can replace the kinds of reports WebTrends and other logfile analysis tools produce remains to be seen.