It was a quiet launch, especially when compared to the buzz generated by Google for some of its other recent product releases, but Google Internet Stats is among the latest from its catalog of resources.  With five main categories covering macro economic trends to the media landscape, each category has a handful of subcategories that enable you to drill down a little further into the stats made available through this new service.

The stats themselves consist of quotes and statements provided by a wealth of partners, including BusinessWeek, Coke, Comscore, Forrester and Google Insights for Search, to name a few.  You’ll note that some of these vendors are corporate entities, others are independent research firms, and others still are members of Google’s own search family.  The result is a collection of attributed tidbits that resemble the Numbers section in Time Magazine.

Browse through the stats as you see fit, perform a keyword search, or receive a random stat from Google.  While somewhat basic in its ability to parse through the data, Google’s new Internet Stats can be a very helpful resource to students, writers, entreprenuers, and others seeking out informationon demographics, consumer behavior, and other forms of market research.

Part of Google’s Emergent Real-time Initiative?

Which sounds a little bit like the intent behind some real time search initiatives, or even a potential form of revenue generation for Twitter.  Google Internet Stats are based on bringing the most recent data points to the general public, offering access to a large selection of data providers.  In its current format, Google Internet Stats isn’t very different from Google News or Google Reader in its implementation and delivery of information to users.

This format keeps things simple for Google, and goes along with a comfortable schema for anyone that’s accustomed to searching through Google.  But could this perhaps be a part of Google’s move to dominate the real time search industry?  As we’ve seen from Collecta and OneRiot this week, the release of APIs is a strategy used by real time search engines for the purpose of gaining developers and partners.  This spreads their service across the web and gives them an advantage in the real search engine space.

Google, on the other hand, has been modifying existing search services to provide a more time-sensitive look at queries.  In its appeal to a wide array of niche markets, Google Internet Stats has the ability to become a standalone resource with the option of integrating with other search data in the future.

What Google Internet Stats is lacking, however, is a cross-vertical approach to looking at the data provided  in this new resource.  The data comes from several third parties, and most tidbits of information link back to the original source.  Google isn’t necessarily cataloging the stats, so there’s no interaction for users to really dig down into the information at hand.

So the benefit, for now, seems to lay in the hands of Google and the vendors that provided the stats found on this site, as Google Internet Stats becomes another way to drive traffic to original source websites.  Until we learn what Google’s larger plans are for future integration with other Google apps or a form of consumer-facing data covered in the guise of personalized recommendations based on things like purchasing behavior, then Google was smart in avoiding a big to-do regarding the release of Internet Stats.