I guess I have been out of touch, I just saw this morning that Google bought Feedburner. Interesting. At first, I was kind of bothered but as I think about it more, there are some real possibilities here.
What will it look like to merge Google Analytics with Feedburner? Will Google Blog Search be even more effective having a direct link to Feedburner stats? Can there be even tighter integration with Google Reader? Gmail? It seems that Google is not big on charging for their services, will Feedburner ProStats become free?
Google’s reach is continually expanding. I am huge Google fan and much of what I do is in Google – Gmail, Reader, Docs and Spreadsheets, iGoogle, Analytics, probably more.
You can opt out of the Google-ized version of Feedburner, you have until June 15, however, opting out means cancelling your Feedburner account. A partial quote from their site:
NOTE: Service of FeedBurner publisher accounts will not be interrupted as a result of the acquisition by Google. You will have a 14-day interim period ending June 15, 2007 to opt-out of allowing Google to service your account. If you take no action by June 15, 2007, the rights to your data will transfer from FeedBurner to Google. Opting out will terminate your user agreement with FeedBurner, permanently delete your FeedBurner account, feeds, and all related statistical data and history, and prevent the transfer of your data rights to Google.
I love many things about Google, but is it smart to have all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak? It’s easy to do, especially since they have such high standards and do what they do better than anyone else.
How diversified are you?
I still think I’ll be sticking with FeedBurner for supplying my feeds. They’re the best in the biz, and I hope the acquisition by Google doesn’t change that. Hopefully, they’ll just improve the statistics and advertising options.
Basically, the only other Google services I use are Gmail and Analytics. I appear to be one of the few who really doesn’t like Google Reader (I strongly prefer Bloglines), prefers Netvibes to iGoogle, and has yet to find a need for Docs and Spreadsheets.
But I do think this is a bit of a change in strategy for Google, which has been occurring over the last few months. Instead of developing their own products to try to outdo the competition, they’re absorbing these up-and-coming companies to create a better set of offerings. Hopefully, this will help them continue to develop better products that will benefit us all instead of just flooding the internets with multiple versions of the same product.