Google burns some smart content cash on Feedburner

Posted Jun 4th 2007 3:15PM by Tom Taulli
Filed under: Google (GOOG)

A couple years ago, I met with the folks at FeedBurner. I really liked the technology but my concern was: is RSS really hitting critical mass?

I'm still not sure. While I think RSS is a great way to distribute content, it still looks like the average Web user doesn't know what it is.

Well, last week, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) agreed to buy the company. The price tag wasn't disclosed.

To get some insight on the deal, I had a chance to interview Dave Morgan, who is the founder of TACODA and a veteran of the online advertising world.

So will this put RSS on the map?

"Probably. However, I think that the deal is really about Google using RSS to get even closer to publishers and content owners and how they organize, distribute and monetize their content. This gets Google much closer and tighter. It puts them right into their content management systems and into their 'fresh' content -- the stuff that is brand new and being sent to users, which Google would not normally have had a chance to crawl yet."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Tags: Feedburner, GOOG, RSS