The cat is out of the bag – was my first reaction when FreshBooks announced the launch of their new benchmarking service in October 2006. Then, and later I called it the hidden business model in SaaS:
He basically announced the hidden value proposition enabled by SaaS: competitive benchmarking. All previous benchmarking efforts were hampered by the quality of source data, which, with all systems behind firewalls was at least questionable. SaaS providers will have access to the most authentic data ever, aggregation if which leads to the most reliable industry metrics and benchmarking.
With Google’s entry today, benchmarking is no longer the hidden business model: it has just gone mainstream. Potentially great value added service, a new revenue source for the provider, which may even allow them to give the core service away for free.
Give away? Do you think I’m smoking something? Read Jeremiah Owyang who predicted that storage companies will (?) eventually pay for your data. 
Related post: Dennis @ AccMan Pro,
[…] UPDATE: Zoli pinged me that he takes a similar view: […]