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Analysis: The Feedburner/Google Deal is a Vote of Confidence for the Blogosphere

Authored by Jay Baage on May 23, 2007 - 11:41am.
Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. Rumors have circulated about this deal for some time and today TechCrunch reported that the rumors have been confirmed according to a source close to the deal. The company was founded in 2003 and has raised just $10 million in capital over two rounds, so the purchase price might seem high. However, the FeedBurner site, mainly a destination for bloggers seeking to measure their feed and blog stats, has grown its US traffic by 204% over the past year (April 2006 to April 2007), according to Hitwise. Google's move reflects not only a strong belief by the online ad giant in the growth of blogging in general, but also the increased need for analytics in the blogosphere as more ads flow into this new and somewhat chaotic area of media.

As you can see in the table above, Google Blog Search has grown quickly over the last year (week ending 5/19/07 vs week ending 1/20/07) and briefly overtook Technorati as the most visited blog search engine earlier this year. So why don't Google just build its own Feedburner? 

Well, Google has the cash and its aggressive moves recently shows that they are willing to move quickly to own this space. Google's recent acquisitions have also reflected its interest in broadening its advertising platforms (YouTube and DoubleClick). I agree with Hitwise analyst LeeAnn Prescott who points out that it makes sense that Google would want to expand quickly its advertising reach into feeds, with so many blogs already running AdSense. In addition, the fast-growing Google Reader is currently not displaying ads, and Google must have an interest in monetizing it.

Joakim Baage
tags: Deals | Internet | Marketing | Advertising | Blogs | Google | Publishing | FeedBurner |



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