Some groups of Eskimos are sending their old people to die quietly on a small piece of iceberg when they can’t contribute anymore. Google’s farewell ritual is far less dramatic, but whenever it needs to dump its own elderly, the company will heartlessly act just the same.

Google presented the new version of Google Analytics about a year ago and since then it allowed webmasters to choose which version they prefer using. That is, until now. Google announced it is killing the old version for good and from now on the new version will be the default and only one available.

This move was fairly expected for quite some time and I’m actually even slightly surprised that Google retired the old version only now. I personally switched to the new Analytics six months ago and since then I haven’t looked back, it simply much better with many more features.

Google Analytics’ director of engineering Paul Muret stressed on the blog post some of the features and tools on the new version of Google Analytics:

Real-Time Reports- The feature was first introduced on September 2011 and admittedly it’s highly addictive. It so awesome that you can view how much visitors you have on the site at any given moment, from where they came and in which pages they are at. I’m hooked.

Multi-Channel Funnels Reports- A nice tool which essentially offers the glimpse on the visitor’s journey (on a 30 days time) before being converted (buying something, signing up, etc). Can be extremely valuable for eCommerce site owners to optimize their landing pages. See this video for more information about Multi-Channel Funnels:

Social Reports- The set of social reports presented in March this year and suppose to offer webmasters better understanding how their website is performing on the social media (+1, Like, Tweet, etc) and how visitors from social networking sites converts.

Mobile App Reports- A new feature which currently still available on beta and predicted to open up later on this year. It allows app developers to keep track of their app’s traffic, engagement and of course conversions.

Content Experiments- Google integrated its Website Optimizer tool into Analytics back in June to offer site owners the possibility to test different page layouts and see which one performs the best. You can watch the following video for more details about it:

Overall, the new version of Analytics is certainly a much better site analysis tool than the old one as it offers more modern functionality and varied features. If you haven’t already switched, now you’ll have to!