Google to buy FeedBurner

[Larwee]

The rumor is flying all over the place that Google is going to buy FeedBurner.

FeedBurner recently was awarded first place in the Feed Management section of the SEOmoz Web 2.0 Awards.

Buying FeedBurner would allow Google to serve their ads in the RSS stream. Many people read blogs using RSS readers and never visit the original blog.

The purchase price being mentioned is one hundred million dollars.

Currently FeedBurner is hosting more than 410,000 RSS feeds. FeedBurner is a newsfeed management provider that provides custom RSS feeds and management tools to bloggers and other online content publishers.

There aren't a lot of details yet, but the articles below contain some additional information.

FeedBurner Deal Could Be Good For Google | WebProNews

Rumor Mill: Google To Acquire FeedBurner | WebProNews

TECH.BLORGE.com » Blog Archive » Google wants RSS, has sights on FeedBurner

[Linda Buquet]

Well if Google buys Feedburner then it will probably start a feeding frenzy of buyouts and sprout ups in the feed arena - just like their purchase of Youtube and DoubleClick created a surge in those markets. So then who will buy Technorati?

I don't know the numbers, but I use both. I almost think Technorati would be a smarter move for Google. If Alexa eyeballs mean anything.

Here's the traffic stats.
Feedburner.com/ vs Technorati.con

[Larwee]

I have often said that I am never surprised by anything that Google does. They take some chances at times and some of the moves they make don't work. But they do make enough of the right moves.

There is all types of speculation as to why Google is interested in Feedburner. Many wouldn't be surprised to see Google integrate Feedburner into Blogger, Google Reader, Google Analytics and others.

I have seen a wide range on how many feeds Feedburner has. I've seen it from 400,000 up to 750,000. It is a large number whatever the actual number is and Feedburner is said to have over 60 million feed subscriptions.

The first thing that comes to mind with most people is that Google is interested in getting ads into RSS feeds.

Google is full of surprises, so it is difficult to know everything they would have in mind for wanting Feedburner.

Here is another article with a some more information
MediaPost Publications - Google's Feedburner Grab Would Impact Personalized Search, Analytics - 05/25/2007

[Larwee]

Google has now confirms what many believed. Google is buying FeedBurner. Google won't say how much they are paying.

FeedBurner is based in Chicago, Illinois and has 30 employees. No information has been given on the future of the employees or if they will remain in Chicago or move to Google headquarters in California.

Here is a Google announcement about the purchase, which also contains an audio press call
Official Google Blog: Adding more flare

This link is to an article about the Google purchase confirmation
Google Confirms FeedBurner Buy

[Larwee]

If people are paying for something from a company, those people are usually very happy when Google buys that company because Google has a history of making things available for free which were not free prior to being bought by Google.

This has now happened with FeedBurner. Two FeedBurner services which previously had a fee no longer cost anything. TotalStats and MyBrand are now free. People need to activate these in order to take advantage of them.

FeedBurner Stats PRO is really useful. You will be able to know how many people viewed or clicked individual content items in your feed and estimate the daily number of subscribers who interacted with your feed content.

There are more details and you can see them here Burning Questions • FreeBurner for Everyone