Its a question that I'm sure keeps some software executives awake at night. They have all but taken over the web analytics space causing market leaders to retool their offerings or move away from the segment all together. With the recent launch of Google Public Data Explorer they are now dipping their toe into the world of data analysis and visualization. Coupled with the recent surge of freely available online databases like OECD Factbook, Un-Employment in the US from the Bureau of Labor and a dozen or so others. Google is truly delivering easy to use and somewhat powerful analytics tools to the masses.

The interface is easy and simple to use includes lots of sliders and click boxes. They have even integrated Google maps into the application to supply simple Geo based features. Its clear that Google could step into the Enterprise Software space pretty easily and with the SaaS and Cloud foundation they already have in place they are well positioned to be a disruptor in the business intelligence arena.

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Sometimes I feel like I live in an echo chamber this can be good or bad depending. The business intelligence and data warehouse community has been my home for over 15 years. So I guess that I shouldn't be surprised that from time to time I make assumptions based on my experiences. The other day a client asked me how popular the search term Business Intelligence was compared to Data Warehouse. My assumption.....BI would beat DW but they were both popular. According to the Google index over 54 million web pages contain at least one of these terms. I was half right. Business Intelligence did beat data warehouse but both are far from popular.

As you can see the two terms collided in late 2005 and business intelligence has held the top position ever since. The interesting thing is the decline. Its clear these terms are on their way out so it makes you wonder what term is leading the way.

I tried Performance management, MDM, Balanced Scorecard, Decision Support, Operational Data, even Enterprise 2.0 but none of them surpassed Business Intelligence. And then......

Yep, Analytics is hot, very hot and it got hot two full years before Tom Davenport published "Competing on Analytics".

So here's my last data tidbit of the day you can file this under things that make you go hmmmmmm. US based technology professionals have made up a very small percentage of users who search for these terms.

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