Off-Topic: Adios, Sitemeter

I don't ever rag on free web services because I am very appreciative of how they enhance my site, their dedication to the blogosphere in general, their support, and considering they cost nothing to use, their incredibly brilliant algorithms and solutions.

I'm talking about services like Blogger, Feedburner, Technorati, Blogrolling, MyBlogLog, TruthLaidBear, ExtremeTracking, and Haloscan. Each of these services has allowed me to thrive as a blogger by providing me with tools I never thought I would need, but now can not live without, and I'm very grateful to each and everyone of those providers.

Tonite, however, I am saying So Long, SiteMeter. I've had it with you. I've used SiteMeter for several years on several websites ( I bet you didn't know that I had more than two) and honestly, I never had a problem with load time or statistics or downtime, except once, and that was just for a day around two years ago.

Well, last week or so, maybe a week or more ago, I noticed that on all of my sites, and I have almost 10, that when I clicked on my SiteMeter stats, the page would load as slowly as if I were on a dial-up modem at 300 baud rate. Yeah, that's pretty damn slow.

Well, I let it pass, thinking SiteMeter was replacing a burned-out drive, or was upgrading their servers, or something. I thought that way because SiteMeter has ads from major advertisers, like the NY Times, and Qantas, and some major automobile companies, so it made sense to me that the amount of money that the SiteMeter group was making on their ads alone, must have been beaucoup money and enough to be able to afford to upgrade all of their servers. Well, it made sense to me at the time, anyway.

Fast forward to today. Well, today I was dawdling, blogging, writing, researching, and surfing, and every single time I clicked on a SiteMeter link, even on blogs that were not my own, the stats page would load slower than molasses.

I started to wonder if I had spyware, or some malware and I was getting suspicious. My firewall could block a tornado, so I couldn't imagine that my firewall was failing, and I also have McAfee SiteAdvisor installed which alerts me to suspicious sites, so I didn't think I could get some spyware, and I check for viruses more than the average bear. Yeah, I was getting more and more convinced that my CPU was behaving like it had spyware on it.

Well, I did what any other brainwashed blogger would do and I Technorati'd "Sitemeter" and sadly, my suspicions were confirmed. You can read how SiteMeter has embraced Spyware here. Too bad. It was a good product, but our love affair is over. Hey, if I am wrong, or if anyone else has different information, I'd like to hear about it but it looks like its Adios, Sitemeter. Hello, StatCounter.