Last week’s rumored acquisition of Feedburner by Google has been confirmed. Feedburner CEO Dick Costolo announced the acquisition with his usual flare and humor proclaiming, “FeedBurner has been acquired by Google. The local weather forecast calls for general euphoria with intermittent periods of off-the-rails delight.”
In a blog post, Google’s VP of Product Management Susan Wojcicki said that Google aims “to give AdWords advertisers broader distribution to an even wider audience of users” and spoke glowingly of Feedburner’s current RSS feed advertising platform. As we said last week, this marriage seems like a match made in heaven. Google already controls the most profitable text ad network on the Internet and will now have the opportunity to expand it into a large number of RSS feeds, giving them even more reach. They also gain access to a lot of statistical data about how people consume content.
Costolo laid out his thoughts on where the newly minted Google property is headed:
“The vision is straightforward: publishers who successfully promote distribution and measure consumption will be in a position to derive more value (aka make more money, gain more influence, etc.) from media distribution. Feeds present a simple and ubiquitous opportunity for publishers to embrace distributed media, but content distribution standards without metrics, publicity tools, and monetization engines are ultimately of little value to individuals and organizations whose businesses depend on an ability to maximize and measure reach.”
This is a marriage of Google’s analytical ability and advertising engine with Feedburner’s data and ability to reach a staggering number of RSS readers. No word on the terms of the deal, but initial rumors consistently pegged it in the $100 million range, which we felt seemed on the low side for Feedburner. We’ll update this post if more information comes through.
The two companies also set up a FAQ about the acquisition, though it doesn’t provide much substance.
