Google Keeps Up Its Expansion

Google is acquiring companies at a voracious rate. No sooner had it been announced that they’d bought Panoramio thannews appeared that Google had bought Chicago-based Feeburner, Inc., for a figure rumoured to be in the region of $100 million, as the company continues to spend money with stunning speed.  Feedburner has been one of the pioneers of Really Simple Syndication (RSS), which offers an easy way to offer information to web sites on a frequently updatedbasis. It’s a heavy hitter in the market, with a client list that includes the BBC and Amazon.   What does that have to do with Google? Quite simply, Google sees RSS as a tool itsadvertisers can use to reach the very lucrative social networking market, which utilizes the mini-applications called widgets. There’s also vast potential in the cell phone market as morepeople use their phones to surf online.   But Feedburner offers more that ties into Google’s core business. It offers statistics so site publishers receive a clearer idea about who theirvisitors are, and it embeds advertising allowing site publishers to receive income from advertisers from the audiences that arrive via RSS feeds.   “We’re constantly looking for ways toidentify and offer new tools for content creators and Web site publishers,” explained Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of product management for Google. Overall it makes a good fit for the richInternet giant, since it will help expand the blog ad service called AdSense for feeds. It follows on Google Aprilpurchase of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, although this has proved far less costly.   With just 30 employees, Feeburner has been at the forefront ofRSS. There are close to 750,000 RSS feeds, over 100,000 of which are video or audio feeds, to 430,000 web site publishers.