Google has agreed to acquire Urchin Software. Urchin is one of the leading Web-Analytics packages, and has spent some time building out ROI tools that enable sites to track both their site visitor's behavior as well as their return on investment of their paid search engine keyword advertising.

This move opens doors for Google to sell AdWords and AdSense to Website owners in Urchin's database, as well as gives them more data as to what is happening after the customer leaves Google.

It is clear that Google is interested in what happens after the click and could signal a future move towards selling ads based on leads and transactions instead of clicks. This could move Google directly into the affiliate marketing business and could explain some of their recent moves that could be considered "affiliate unfriendly".

It will be interesting to watch, what are you thoughts?