Going head-to-head with its competitors, Yahoo has announced that it will provide its newly acquired IndexTools Web Analytics service free of charge to clients and partners who accept the standard Yahoo agreement.

Yahoo purchased the Hungarian web analytics company earlier this month, while in the midst of its own battle over being acquired by Microsoft.

Talk of the move in the blogosphere has been positive.

Wrote Alec Cochrane on Slashdot: "Having seen Google set up their Google Analytics product for free (in an attempt to get everyone to spend more money on adwords) and then seen Microsoft release their version of a free web analytics tool into beta, Yahoo have decided to do the same thing, by buying someone else and releasing it into the wild for free. Great news for bloggers who don't want to sign up for Google's 'evil' plans."

On Dennis Mortensen's web analytics and marketing blog, he refers to the offer as "getting 80 percent of the functionality of Omniture at no charge."