Gomez measures Last Mile with Porivo buy

Waltham, Massachusetts-based Gomez Inc has bought rival Porivo Technologies Inc to broaden its suite of web site performance measurement services, the companies announced this week.

Gomez tests whether its clients' site performance is up to scratch using a network of 50-odd nodes "located as close to the network service providers' core routers as possible", whereas Porivo has software running on 10,000 volunteer desktops that uses spare bandwidth to test the performance of its clients' sites as experienced by the end user.

Gomez said in a statement that it will now be able to offer measurements of the "last mile" to users' desktops, providing a greater depth of data than either company offered separately. Porivo can measure performance to end users of "isolated ISPs", Gomez said which complements Gomez's "synthetic tests" from large POPs.

"Porivo's pioneering technology and approach to web performance measurement complements the real-time diagnostic accuracy that is Gomez's stock in trade," Gomez CEO Alex Stein said in a statement. The companies did not disclose the value of the acquisition.

Though the acquisition was announced Monday, yesterday Gomez has still not removed the statement from its web site that reads: "Our approach does not attempt to replicate 'customer experience', which is too subjective and variable to be statistically valid."

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