Google buys Feedburner
We can all relax the rumor mill a bit now but just a bit. Google has indeed purchased the RSS provider, Feedburner. We’re not sure what this means for current subscribers of the paid service but Google has a habit of making all tiers of service available for free, whether or not that happens with Feedburner remains to be seen.
We discussed this in the past and dismissed it as a rumor but as things in the business goes, it isn’t over until the “fat lady sings.” And did she ever sing.
There are two types of people, those who love RSS and those who don’t, I belong to the “don’t” crowd. If you like a website, sure, you could subscribe to the RSS feed (especially if it has audio content) or you can bookmark the site and visit it every day and to me that is more fun.
Whatever you like, Google is now in the RSS business through the purchase of another company. What I can’t understand is why big companies like Microsoft, Google and even Yahoo! just buy up the services instead of turning to their own internal talent to develop what is needed. Surely, it can’t be that hard. Is it just easier to buy what you need? It certainly can’t be cheaper.
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June 3rd, 2007
That’s easy. They’re not buying the RSS technology only, they’re buying an RSS technology that is used by hundreds of thousands of publishers already, versus starting with 0 users when making their own.
This site is now going to be using Google to serve up its RSS feeds, along with many others. Would that have been the case if Google had just rolled their own solution? It certainly wasn’t with Picasa Albums, Google Docs, Finance, Groups, Orkut, Froogle, Talk, etc etc.
Likewise, Youtube was not purchased just for the technology (I still find Google Video to be superior and better to use), but for both the audience and the huge library of content.
Developing your own technology is fine and dandy, but it doesn’t do anything for you if you can’t get any people to use it because they are sticking with an incumbant. Seems pretty basic to me.