Google buys Feedburner; Expanding Their Ad Platform?
TechCrunch is reporting that the rumors of Google buying Feedburner have been confirmed. Google is going to pay the tidy price of $100 million dollars for Feedburner.
"Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to our source, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.
"The information we have is that the deal is now under a binding term sheet and will close in 2-3 weeks, and there is nothing that can really derail it at this point."
This is obviously a fantastic service to acquire for Google, besides the obvious fit into their blogging system it also gives them a very, very rich data source to play with. They know what people (the non-blogger people that is) are publishing, what people are pulling feeds and all kinds of information.
Everyone is abuzz with how much more big brother like Google is becoming as they expand their services and increase their data stores through acquisitions. I have no doubt that Google will exploit the rich information locked away inside Feedburner, but Google's true strength is the power and profitability of online advertising. Feedburner will fit very nicely into Google's expanding ad platform.
It is very clear now that the internet and online advertising are the next big ad markets. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are in an arms race to expand their ad networks to take advantage this opportunity.
