Google Buys Feedburner for $100 Million: Expect more Monetization Options
According to TechCrunch, Google has just acquired Feedburner, a web feed management company for $100 million. This was previously a rumor but now has been confirmed by Michael Arrington, who says that the deal mostly involves upfront cash payment by Google.
Interesting news for publishers currently running Feedburner’s advertising program because it’s likely that Google might integrate its Adsense contextual ad network with Feedburner.
Feedburner has a large inventory of publishers currently using their services and it would make sense for Google to tap these current users instead of relaunching or promoting Adsense for Feeds, Google’s RSS advertising program which has been in a perpetual closed beta since 2005.
Current Adsense publishers will also have the option of experimenting with feed based monetization. The integration with Adsense might also result in a lower barrier of entry (subscription level) for publishers.
Not to mention that Google will finally be stepping head-on into the RSS advertising industry by allowing it’s Adwords advertisers to purchase feed-based ad campaigns through Feedburner’s current setup.
It’ll be very interesting to see what changes are made in the near future.
And the annihilation continues as Google stomps it’s way through the internet universe . . .
Nice, I guess it is just good for everyone.
Ok, now they’re making me nervous. YouTube, and now Feedburner? When do you suppose they’ll be buying ICANN?
Great, I may need to find a new feed service…..
That means advertisements will appear in feeds!
Well, this is good for us bloggers where we could earn extra from Google. However, to readers especially those with slow internet line, will have to bear with the advertisements.
What do you think?
I wonder if Google Analytics will be able to provide detailed information on your feed subscribers.
Good point Brown Baron - I wonder if the FB TotalStats will become free and wrapped up in Analytics?
Sam Chan - my experience with the existing FB Advertising Network was rather pathetic, but Google should have a larger pool of advertisers and with AdSense-like matching to your text, it may be more relevant and a good chance to monetise those feed readers.
This is really good.
Now we can expect some good monetizing options in RSS.
These days everything is monetized.. This is getting very saturized
Sam,
I don’t having adverts in the RSS feed will slow down the page load time much but as you said, it is a good way for us to make more money from Google.
Brown Baron & Ken Y-N
It would be nice if the feed stats package is integrated into Analytics, which is already quite a powerhouse when it comes to measuring site traffic. I can envision having an extra ‘feed subscribers’ panel at the Dashboard and sidebar.. very sweet indeed. ^-^
ads ads and more ads
Ryan,
Thats a good question…
i wondering when google will buy Yahoo….
google is buying big sites :S they also own blogger and doubleclick
I knew that is going to happen i head that rumor about a month ago, anyways I still don’t see the point of it ?
Why?
Uh oh, Google did something, let’s find ways to complain about it
Come on people, you’re acting like this is a bad thing. First of all, Feedburner has already been monetizing feeds, they just kept it to higher-traffic feeds, that’s all. Same with Google, they’ve had AdSense for feeds for a long time now, but it’s only the higher-traffic feeds who could use it. Now it might be passed to all types of feeds regardless of subscriber numbers. Samara: Why would you need to switch to a different feed service? Unless Google does something terrible with it or something you specifically don’t want, what would be the point, other than the fact that it’s Google? Don’t be stupid.
I know 1thing Google should never buy Windows products hahahah nor their services like msn , I dont know why I started to use MSN 10y ago , but now my email is stuck with them ( main email ) and I just hate it no matter what they do. For example you can’t sort emails by ( unred emails ) you cant do bunch of stuff, even their search engine ( before the live) had problems searching for emails it only searched subject line and email address thats it.
This is a very good move for Google especially in light of Google’s universal search service, possible integration with Urchin, monetisation with AdSense, to name just some. Access to over 700,000 RSS feeds for a steal of a price. Not bad.
The only good to come out of this would be integration of feed stats in Analytics as Brown Baron points out. Other than that it’s another nail in the coffin for anyone wanting to make a living outside of Google.
To Maki-
I see you truncated your posts. I like it better. Also, making the rounds for the Influential Blogger award. So good going on that. I know…off topic, but I am reading your series on niche blogging, too.
One thing i can look forward to is them integrating statistics for subscribers in Google Analytics.
Good point Ravi, that will be awesome
I think the one good thing about this is that you can now go to one place and check out everything instead of running in circle on the web.
What would be the next company Google will buy?
Noli,
I guess it might be DoshDosh, when its subscribers hit one billion
I like Feedburner a lot, and think being owned by Google will bring huge benefits to Feedburner publishers. I’m a member of the Feedburner Advertising Network, and while the quality of the advertisers is good, the inventory has sometimes been light. That will change under Google. And I think we’ll deftinitely get more stas for free, whether its from Feedburner’s tracking system or Google analytics.
TraderRod,
That will be very unlikely but thanks for the kind expectations.
I think this is not yet wrong time to buy Google Stocks … i wish i could have bought them before a year…
makes it seem like a bargain for the ipo price of $100…
This way - do we realize - that most normal users’ personal preferences & history will be with a single company’s databases - which can be co-related and analyzed to extract large amount of our private information. It is true that most of this info is strewed around the web but the issue that now becomes is that - it is slowly coming under the roof of a single private company. I’m concerned what and how the after-affects might be - regarding our personal & private information - which very much reflects in our browsing experiences.
I’ve always believed that Google is conquering us all. I can’t wait to see how exactly will Feedburner users benefit from this.
$100m…only?