I recently talked about how Analytics is building the Newsroom of the Future – and posted a set of excerpts from a BusinessWeek Article about how AOL was perhaps moving towards that promised data driven Newsroom. Ironic perhaps, but the New York Times just ran a story on Bloomberg’s acquisition of BusinessWeek, and more importantly for this debate, some of the analytics processes imposed on BusinessWeek writers.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo Web Analytics Dashboards are, at worst, unfortunately just a report collage – and, at best, an aspiring opportunity for tail users to have an easy ascent towards true Dashboards. Yahoo is proving the best flexibility in what data to show and how to visualize it, but Google provides the best understanding of how to visually communicate quantitative data, where the Microsoft Dashboard lack both data flexibility and understanding of how to visualize it.