How safe is your data?

One of the things which shocked me when I came out of my hiding period is the sudden disappearance of Performancing Metrics. As you have guessed by now, I was using it here to have an understanding of how my users use my site.

Performancing was recently acquired by PayPerPost and they couldn’t get the deal right with Metrics. This has made them to stop the hosting of Metrics service and have decided to release the code as open source, which may take some time. So the net result is that now I am left without a Stats package 😉

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not here to criticize or accuse Performancing or PayPerPost. Metrics was a great product and I was one among the thousands of happy customers they had. It was totally free and was completely invisible on the page, since you don’t need to display a graphics or a back link on your site. They were not deleting the old data (as most stats services do) and the stats were also private. But what concerns me is that I have lost all the valuable stats data which was recorded till now by the service. Worst still, according to the comment by Nick, there is no way for me to export the stats data out of the system. 🙁

Now the question which has popped up in my mind is “How safe is my data?” with the other (web 2.0) websites. So just for a wild imagination, what happens if Google gets dissolved or bought up like Performancing or goes bankrupt (Just imagine). My (digital) life may come to a standstill without access to my email (gmail) and schedules (Calendar). And what if the same fate happens to Yahoo, I will loose all my bookmarks (del.icio.us), my old emails (Yahoo Mail), my photos (flickr and Yahoo photos) etc. Well, it gets too shocking. Isn’t it? 🙁 Worst still what happens if they say, pay $XXX to get access to your data?

This leaves me with lot of questions and also with some shock. But back to the original problem, now I have to look out for a new Metrics/Stats package. I am not able to decide whether I have to go for a 3rd party package (like Feedburner, Google Analytics etc) or install my own copy in my server (like Mint, Analog, Awstats etc). Guys do you have any recommendations?

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