Piwik: Google Analytics alternative

After hearing about google CEO Eric Schmidt’s philosophy (“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”) the data leecher Google seemed more suspicious to me than ever. Using Google Mail, Calendar, etc. is so damn comfortable (almost too comfortable), but I don’t think i like the direction this whole Google thing is going in. They know what you search for, who you know and exchange emails with and soon they will also know what you see (keyword AR-Browser). Long story short, I think we should all look out for Google service alternatives and try them out, as long as they still exist… who knows how long it is until we only have Google and nothing else ;).

I found a neat alternative for Google Analytics. It’s called Piwik, it’s open source and the best thing is, you’re hosting it on your own webserver, so the data belongs to you and only you have access to it. You need at least PHP 5.1 and a MySQL database, the installation takes less than 5 minutes.
I never used all of the Google Analytics features, so i can’t say if Piwik offers exactly the same functions, but it looks very promising and for my purposes it offers more than enough. There is an API, plugins, real-time reports, customizable interface and many more features.
If you’re interested, check out their online demo and try Piwik out on your own webserver.