Google now owns your RSS feeds
The rumored Google - Feedburner deal has been confirmed, at least they say so at TechCrunch. Google is buying Feedburner for 100 million dollars.
Again, money swapping hands between corporations should not concern the end user. Luckily, Feedburner has been quite open with their policy of unsubscribing, so - bar some unforeseen changes - you shouldn’t worry about control of your feeds swapping hands, if you had any such worries in the first place.
Here is an old, but as far as I know still standing document from Feedburner which shows that the process of unsubscribing from Feedburner and regaining control over your RSS feeds - should you ever choose to do so - is a painless process.
This said, congratulations to Feedburner on this achievement. They offered a great service which was hard to turn into a business, so selling it to someone bigger was a logical choice and not one that should be looked down upon. FranticIndustries is one of Feedburner’s satisfied customers, and I hope Feedburner will stay on this path in the future.
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:59 am
Question: Why didn’t Google develop this in house? The market is largely nascent, so they have time to do so (unlike w/ YouTube). I can’t imagine that they couldn’t pull it off for under 100M.
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:28 pm
@rod: good question, but it’s hard to answer it if you don’t know the details. For example, one would say that for 6 billion dollars Microsoft could have developed their own ad platform, and yet they chose to spend that money on purchasing aQuantive.
I’d say that it’s a combination of Feedburner’s technology being good, perhaps backed with some patents, them already having a big user base, and Feedburner having a really good reputation, that makes it worth the money to Google.
May 24th, 2007 at 12:41 am
Wow, it really is Bubble 2.0! I can only imagine how the talk around the Google campus goes. Doesn’t phrases like “we are positioning ourselves for the future” echo from a not so distant past? How on earth are they planning to see a ROI for Feedburner?
May 24th, 2007 at 11:13 am
[…] Le indiscrezioni sull’affare Google-Feedburner vengono confermate, a quanto pare Google acquisterebbe Feedburner per 100 milioni di dollari. [via franticindustries.com] […]
May 26th, 2007 at 7:03 am
Ola, I think Feedburner has plans for (or has already has) ads in the feeds. Adding Feedburner’s ability to track subscribers to Google Analytics wouldn’t be a bad thing as well. RSS feeds are huge factor of sharing content and I am definitely sure Google regards them as another way for them to position ad space using ad sense or the ads that Feedburner has setup (or begun to setup).
February 26th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I comepletly agree with you. It’s nice seeing another intellectual online.