According to TechCrunch.com, Feedburner is in the final steps of an acquisition by Google for $100 million - with little or no chance of the all-cash buy going south.
What is Feedburner?
"FeedBurner is the leading provider of media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds. Our Web-based tools help bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers promote, deliver and profit from their content on the Web."
In my words Feedburner is a central hub of hundreds of thousands of blog and podcast feeds owned by corporations, small businesses and individuals alike that can use its software to publicize their feeds, monitor subscriptions and user interaction, and to monetize their feeds.
How Might Owning Feedburner Help Google?
* An Edge Over Other Analytics Solutions: Google Analytics could integrate an edge that few (if any) analytics programs could match - RSS feed statistics. One of Feedburner's most alluring capabilities is its ability to track subscribers to feeds and the activities of feed subscribers. Integrating this with Google Analytics would automatically provide a powerful edge for Google over other analytics solutions.
* Monetization of Over 700,000 Feeds: Feedburner has created a significant feed advertising solution where advertisers can pay-per-impression for visibility within a chosen marketplace. Publishers (those who create the feeds) can opt to monetize their feed using Feedburner's system. Google will now have access to this network and over time I expect they will enhance this system dramatically to include the new and existing pay per click solutions that have made them so successful.
* More Visibility: FeedBurner's total feeds sit at 700,000 as I write this posting (according to Feedburner). Now a mere 700,000 may seem small in comparison to Google's massive reach but when you consider that some feeds have hundreds of thousands of subscribers (see a list of the top 40 here) it becomes clear this acquisition offers some appealing numbers.
So they did it again... Google has made yet another smart acquisition. If the report from TechCrunch is accurate the acquisition is set to be completed within 2-3 weeks.
http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1660/
