It’s just an unconfirmed rumor at this point, but Sam Sethi has “just heard from a VERY trusted source that Google is buying Feedburner.” Considering that Microsoft just spent $6 billion on aQuantive, this purchase would certainly be a good way for Google to steal back some headlines.
It would also be a good way for the Mountain View-based corporation to bolster its presence in the realm of RSS Feeds; after all, the 2007 SEOmoz Web 2.0 Awards just honored FeedBurner with first place in the “Feed Management” section. The service received five stars each in the categories of usability, usefulness, and interface and design.
So . . . why the lack of official word? “The delay in announcing the deal . . . is solely due to the delay in closing out the DoubleClick deal,” writes Sethi.
He continues, “Today many of us predominately read blogs via our RSS readers and thus never actually visit the original blog source and/or see the sites supporting adverts . . . . So RSS has effectively eliminated the potential value of AdSense and DoubleClick because the majority of people never view them.”
Yet if the search engine corporation bought FeedBurner, “Google could then start to serve their own ads (Adsense or DoubleClick) into the RSS stream.”
The Web seems to be responding positively to the idea of a deal between Google and FeedBurner, even if Irishman Ken McGuire begins his post with the exclamation, “Good Lord.” Chip Griffin considers both the good and bad, and yet has already dubbed the potential combination “GooBurner.”
We’ll be sure to post an update if either company weighs in on the issue.
