Google Eats Feedburner

It's funny to think now, but just a few short months ago we labored under the conventional wisdom that "Google doesn't do major purchases." Which was correct up to a point. If you look at Goob's M&A activity over the last five years you see a string of (by VC standards) nickel and dime acquisitions: lots of startups doing nice features (maps, spreadsheets, etc) plus a few deals where Google wanted to buy a company for the R&D team.

In fact, even the YouTube deal seemed like an outlier. But no more.

Google just announced that it was buying Feedburner for about $100M. This of course comes on the heels of the Doubleclick acquisition that was announced last month. So now Google's acquisition activity is becoming a bit clearer.

What seems obvious is that Goobe has gone from making small tactical purchases (in order to boost products that it wanted to develop) to making much larger strategic purchases in its drive to become the undisputed Master of Your Online Life. The Feedburner acquisition means that Google will now have access to millions of RSS feeds, the new life blood of the Web. It's all in service of finding out more about you the user and serving up better and more targeted advertising.

I has seen the future and it is looking increasingly multi-colored.

Comments

[Adrian]

Dramatic Headline Shai... and perfect too!