Feedly, Feedburner Acquired by Google

Just last week I was talking with my wife about the conundrum of how to view statistics on her RSS feeds. Here is the backstory:

I'd been hounding her for a while to syndicate the full content of her blog. Suffice it to say that I wanted more than to just get the gist of her posts in Google Reader. I wanted to read the full version of her posts right there, without waiting for the sluggish (IMHO) blogger page to load.

One day she tired of my whining and relented. A few days later she was frustrated by a substantial drop in page views for her blog. This is when we realized that analytics doesn't track views of your feeds.

Google must have recognized this same problem. They saw yet another ad sales opportunity in RSS feeds and have acquired Feedburner to get a leg up on the metrics end of RSS. With Feedburner & Analytics Google now has a formidable suite of statistical analysis tools.

But that isn't all this gives them. Google AdSense is a very well established (and lucrative) platform for online advertising and now that they have FeedBurner, they'll be able to inject ads into your feeds, track the viewership, and make money in the process.

Google has also been doing trials with Video AdSense and with both Google Video and YouTube in the fold, they have the content and platform for delivering media rich ads in spades.

All in all, purchasing Feedburner is just a great move for Google.


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