So the news broke, and some of my colleagues in Bloggy Network have already expressed their opinions when it comes to Google buying FeedBurner for $100 million dollars and so I wanted to recap some of what they have said, and add in my own thoughts on the acquisition.
Ahmed believes that this will provide Google with even more information about the elusive blogosphere and has published a post entitled Google & FeedBurner: Double Whammy.
So the acquisition of FeedBurner gives them a ton more information. They know clickrate. They know the subscription # of a lot of sites. They can find information/data they previously did not know existed (which I touched on briefly).
I talk about covering the A to Z process for our properties – Google has done the same. They know what end-users are doing (via Google Analytics). They know what end-users are reading and finding interesting (via Google Reader). And now they know how popular blogs are, and what people find interesting on those specific blogs (via Google FeedBurner). And don’t forget they can trick your ad habits now – not just via AdSense/Adwords, but also through DoubleClick now.
Griffith, over on Forever Geek, has published a post called Google acquires FeedBurner for $100 million.
He goes over more of the meat and potatoes of the deal, and give a quick nod to the possible inclusion of Adsense in RSS feeds.
Although FeedBurner already gave you the option of adding advertisement to your feeds, my guess is that now it will be Adsense exclusive, if it isn’t already (I haven’t checked in a long time). Other than that, you can probably rest assured that it will remain free for everyone. The only difference is that it will probably be integrated into more Google products.
I agree with both of them. This gives Google even more information on a wide variety of sites, and while Google is not really known for improving the features of a service they buy, they have started to make some serious headway with their Blogger platform, and I can see FeedBurner becoming an integral part of their Blogger blogs. As well as providing them with a large user base that they can get using Adsense both on their sites, and in their feeds. With FeedBurner, Adsense, and Analytics, they will be able to provide you with advertising and statistics to cover every angle.
I think this was a great move for both Google and for FeedBurner, and I look forward to seeing what interesting ways that FeedBurner is integrated into Google’s already powerful brand.