The headline:
TechCrunch: Google to Purchase Feedburner for $100 Million Cash
What is so important about this acquisition?
Feedburner is famous for effectively and efficiently getting users to notify them of new content and it being published quickly and easily by publishers. It also offers great information to their members to monitor their feeds. The difficulty for Feedburner appears to be generating revenue. They do so by offering additional tools and support for paid members, but the one thing that Google brings to the table is generating revenue by offering ads and sharing (some) of the proceeds to publishers.
If all of the speculation is true, I think it will become a(nother) great asset in Google’s mix of products and services, plus it will give them yet another opportunity to offer advertisers targeted traffic with advertising based upon the content of the feed/post. This also sounds like an awesome return on investment for Feedburner, as they have invested $10 million since their startup in 2003. Doing the math, that’s a $10 return on every dollar invested in only 4 years. I’d take those returns!
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I feel this is going to be bad bad news for publishers everywhere.
I outlined the reasons on my blog,
http://clicks.thumblogger.com/home/log/2007/21/why-the-google-feedburner.html
I just wonder if there will be another to be the next google just as google was the next yahoo, its sad to say that even though google started off as a good company as did yahoo that once you get too big you forget the little people.
Mortalez,
I understand your concern as a publisher. Google’s only hope is to keep acquiring to fill in the potential gaps in their mix. I think that Google might be exposing themselves in their core competency, search. How it plays out and even if it is actually true, still have to be played out.
I notice that alot of people are starting to move to ask.com, and I am thinking they might end up being the next google, and if that happens they have only themselves to blame.
I think Ask has a long (loooooooong) way to go before that happens, but there will always be opportunities for competitors.
As Google gets bigger, people tend to trust them less (Microsoft anyone?), this has been the way of the web! I think it would happen to Ask or Yahoo if they were in the same position.