Google to Acquire Feedburner
TechCrunch reports that Google will acquire RSS feed management company Feedburner in a deal reportedly worth $100 million.
This deal could be big for a number of reasons:
First, it suggests that Google will put its force behind RSS adoption.
Second, it means that Google believes that it's feasible to monetize RSS feeds.
Feedburner offers a feed and blog advertising network. To-date, publishers have struggled to figure out a way to monetize the reading of their RSS feeds. While most people think of Google as being in the search business, they're really in the traffic monetization business. The acquisition of Feedburner suggests that Google believes that RSS can be monetized through advertising.
Another way to look at this, as suggested by WebProNews, is that while Microsoft, through Vista, will be pushing user adoption of RSS, Google will be pushing publishers into creating more RSS.
Feedburner was founded in 2003 and has raised $10 million to date, led by Mobius Venture Capital, Union Square Ventures and Portage Ventures.
Many people (including me) have touted the "year of RSS" for the past few years. With Microsoft and Google pushing it, it looks as though the time for RSS may finally have arrived.
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