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May 23, 2007

$100 Million Payday For Feedburner - This Deal Is Confirmed

Michael Arrington

208 comments »

Rumors about Google acquiring RSS management company Feedburner from last week, started by ex-TechCrunch UK editor Sam Sethi, are accurate and are now confirmed according to a source close to the deal. Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to our source, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.

The information we have is that the deal is now under a binding term sheet and will close in 2-3 weeks, and there is nothing that can really derail it at this point.

Huge congratulations to Feedburner. The company was founded in 2003 and has raised just $10 million in capital over two rounds. Portage Ventures funded their $1 million Series A round in 2004. The $9 million Series B round was closed in mid 2005 (second close in 2006), from Mobius Venture Capital and Union Square Ventures.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 10:05 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Steve S

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:08 am

    Well I guess we are going to be seeing “Ads by Google” in our RSS feeds pretty soon. I think this is a really good sign, Google’s business is delivery information efficiently. This will help that immensely.

  2. KillerStartups.com

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:09 am

    Way to go Feedburner!

    Thanks Techcrunch for breaking the news.

  3. Rajiv Dingra

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:16 am

    This just reinstates the fact that google will buy anything that is compatible and increases its ad revenues more that its current products do.

  4. noseoguru

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:18 am

    I like Feedburner and if anyone was worth some money it was them. I can’t wait until I can have AdSense advertising in my RSS feed; you just can’t escape ads :)

  5. Tranix.net

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:27 am

    Google and Yahoo are racing :-) I feel bad for yahoo that they’re one step behind Google

    GoGoogle

  6. Zaid

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:27 am

    I’m surprised. 100mil sounds little for what I would think is a high growth area.

    On the other hand, if feedburner didn’t sell it would always be at google’s peril. With more and more people using analytics, adsense, adwords combo–if google introduced a well done competitor, feedburner’s future market growth would slow down.

  7. Peter

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:27 am

    Interesting. If Google injects AdSense into the feeds will it block out ads from other networks or other types of advertising?

  8. zoso

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:28 am

    seems a fair amount.

    prolly google will somehow include it into google reader

  9. Edward O'Connor

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:32 am

    Good for them! I think this makes a hell of a lot of sense for both companies.

  10. Adam

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:33 am

    They should just rename the internet to Google.

  11. Nick

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:35 am

    Uh oh, does that mean there will be a Google engineering office sprouting up in the Windy City?

  12. Erik Schwartz

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 am

    Fred Wilson is having a good week. Two exits in 3 days.

  13. carlo

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 am

    “Uh oh, does that mean there will be a Google engineering office sprouting up in the Windy City?”

    No.

  14. Brian Lash

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:42 am

    Google? RSS? Smells like trouble for TextLinkAds.

    Oh well. Congrats Feedburner!

  15. Nathan Kaiser

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:42 am

    Makes a lot of sense for both organizations. Way to go FeedBurner!

  16. CS

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:43 am

    Loving this move by Google. Congrats to feedburner. I think I speak for everyone in saying that Feedburner rules for RSS.

  17. DinoHorse

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:48 am

    I am very happy for Feedburner, this is on of the services that are so usefull, and so well done… Congrats!!

  18. Ali

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:48 am

    More google ads in my feeds now.

  19. Jessica

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:48 am

    “Google? RSS? Smells like trouble for TextLinkAds.”

    How so Brian?

  20. Brad

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:49 am

    Wow. Great going feedburner.

  21. kundojjala

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:52 am

    who will acquire techcrunch?

  22. Lee

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:54 am

    Just $100mil - sounds quite small compared to the youtube deal.
    Surely feedburner should be able to be more profitable than youtube?

  23. Useful Concept

    May 23rd, 2007 at 10:59 am

    Feedburner is a great product and company. Very impressive, though the figure seems quite small. Then again they are still under 500,000 publishers. I would have thought they had more.

    “Currently feeding 422,717 publishers who’ve burned 721,074 feeds (as of 21 May 07).”

  24. permanent hater

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:02 am

    Add:

    2 rounds of fund raising… +
    4 co-founders… +
    a bunch of geek employees with stocks… +
    $100 price tag +

    = not such a great payday for each co-founder… $10M max for each

    Sucks to have friends when you start a company

    LOL

  25. Ed

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:02 am

    Wow. Who doesn’t use Feedburner. I agree with Zaid. Is that too little?

  26. Venkatakrishna Nalamothu

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:05 am

    Google is much ahead of its competitors in vision and strategy. Our future revolves more around Google. As long Google is sharing some money, I don’t bother about others.

  27. Ed

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:07 am

    @ 23 - RSS should continue to grow. Plus, that’s 400+K publishers. That’s translate into alot of readers for each. Look at TechCrunch. I remember the single thousands readers.

  28. Will Kern

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:11 am

    Cograts to Dick and Company for an excellent exit. Hats off to Mr. Feld and Mr. Wilson for a wise Series B investment.

  29. -gary

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:19 am

    Great, I keep trying to stay away from Google, and they keep buying up the services I use.

    Since I’ve was banned from AdSense over a dispute I had with them years back, what does that mean for my ability to embed ads in my feeds? I’m sure the foot will fall on the current advertising in FB soon, if not immediatly.

    To me, this whole 2.0 consolidation crap is getting annoying. I would love to outsource more of my stuff, but when buyouts and mergers keep happening left and right, there is no safe place to go. I’ve prob used 20 different services over the years that have been gobbled up and phased out in favor of the largers service that I turned down in the first place.

  30. Curt

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:21 am

    When you say a “rumor” was “started” by an “ex-TechCrunch” employee, did you mean it was a “story” that was “broken” by a “competitor” who scooped you?

  31. permanent hater

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:22 am

    I hear the next acquisition is Jajah.

  32. JB

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:31 am

    Wait, I thought you were trying to get away from all this acquisition BS and get back to the cool tech apps??? Or was that post just one of your many mood swings? You create your own reality, my friend.

  33. Cris

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:31 am

    Hopefully this doesn’t mean Google pauses new signups like they did for Writely as they Google-fy the new property.

  34. UpstartThis

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:36 am

    As of May 2007, FeedBurner hosted feeds for 410,769 publishers.
    That makes the number of what Google is paying per publisher to be $243.

    Congradulations to FeedBurner.

    Now how about Feedster and anyone knows any other sites that are still not purchased?

  35. Nate

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:55 am

    Huh?

    Am I the only one that really doesn’t want to see ads popping up in my RSS reader. Isnt’ that why I use my RSS reader instead of relying on my email inbox which is full of ads (spam). Now my reader is going to be full of crap?

    Or is this deal so that better/more ads can be placed on Feedburner’s stylized view of rss feeds. If thats the case, I still don’t get it. With the latest browsers all having their own RSS view no one sees this stylized view anymore. The only ones that still see it are using IE6.

  36. Blonde 2.0

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:56 am

    Google is racing against Yahoo, Microsoft, and winning! Congrats FeedBurner. Really enjoy your product!

  37. Rajiv Doshi

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:56 am

    Congratulations to the FeedBurner team and great move on Google’s part., it just makes sense for them to be a strong competitor in RSS advertising. Everyone wins from Google, FeedBurner and even the publishers who use FeedBurner.

  38. Steven Roussey

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:08 pm

    Congrats to Feedburner! And to Google!

  39. Tech News

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:09 pm

    Wow - this is a stunner to the FEED Business

  40. pallet jack

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:13 pm

    only 100 million? - that is a lot of money for a technology that will be replaced by ATOM in the next year - then again

    - I guess the purchase was the customer - not the product …

    -RB

  41. ugh

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:21 pm

    Google. Ugh.

  42. Find Hot Bargains

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    When will the buying stop?

  43. fred wilson

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:32 pm

    Mike

    I can’t say anything about the rumored deal, but you did miss two other VC firms who are in the deal; Sutter Hill and DFJ. It’s a great management team and a great group of investors.

    Fred

  44. John / SocialNext

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:40 pm

    Congrats to Feedburner!

  45. Tech News India

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:44 pm

    Congrats to Feedburner!
    Looks like a great idea + management skills = something google wants more of!

  46. Mike

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:53 pm

    Anything related to the Interwebs, technology, information, data, advertising…will one day be a Google product. As Adam said, the Internet should just be renamed Google. ISPs will become GSPs.

    During the Super Bowl, the network will sell 30-second Google spots for millions at a clip.

    TechCrunch will becoming GoogleCrunch.

    Marketing will becoming “Google gaming” or maybe just “Google optimizing.”

    And perhaps best of all, piracy and copyright infringement will forever be known as “f–king over Google.”

  47. Justin Cook

    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:54 pm

    I don’t get it, how is “Google? RSS? Smells like trouble for TextLinkAds.” applicable? Where’s the trouble?

  48. CMS

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:01 pm

    Good can make everything :D

  49. Frank Gruber

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:12 pm

    Congrats to FeedBurner! :)

  50. Martin Porcheron

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    Sounds like users might benefit as much as Google if this is true.

    I’m guessing FeedBurner’s stats system will be replaced/merged into Analytics, and made free, of course. We might also see Google Accounts integration so that it can work with AdSense + AdWords through one interface.

  51. Cafe_Cafe

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:17 pm

    Google will buy us all slowly :)

    Congratulations, you´ve a fantastic blog.
    Pay me a visit whenever you want at http://FreeOnlineFun.blogspot.com
    Regards

  52. soxiam

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:19 pm

    It’s interesting how everyone’s talking about the obvious adsense-in-feeds angle but no one is talking about the feed analytics data being afforded by this acquisition. Google just tapped into another major vein they can data-mine and virtually every one of their products could potentially benefit from this down the road.

  53. Marshall Kirkpatrick

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:21 pm

    FeedBurner publishes feeds for IDG Tech Publishing ( PC World, Computerworld, Macworld), Reuters, USA Today, AOL, Newsweek and who knows how many more. I love FeedBurner (they also REALLY want people to capitalize the B, fwiw) and if they are happy then it sounds good to me.

  54. Don MacAskill

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:29 pm

    Crap, that sucks! Yet another service I *love* being bought and likely destroyed (JotSpot, anyone?).

    I wish these big companies could actually acquire things without killing them most of the time.

  55. Paul B.

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:31 pm

    Congrats to Feedburner - oh my!

  56. PENIX

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:34 pm

    100 million, God damn! Google is spending money like the world is ending tomorrow.

  57. Allen Stern

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:35 pm

    Yea Marshall, I had a runin with Traci at big B about that a few months ago. I even made her a big B poster and left it with her when I visited their offices in Chicago.

    :)

  58. Technogeekboy

    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:58 pm

    Interesting. I’m curious to see how adsense gets worked in and if we’ll have to pay more to keep the ads out (or if we’ll simply miss out on the revenue share). I use FeedBurner at our nonprofit association and ads will not be allowed.

  59. Wil Schroter

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:05 pm

    Anyone know how much they were doing in revenues?

    Funny how rarely this gets asked.

  60. Bill Hartzer

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:11 pm

    Gee, now Google will know even more about our blogs.

  61. David Carrero Fdez-Baillo

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:19 pm

    I think about this buy, is cheap :)

  62. Manfred Zotter

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:19 pm

    Congrats to Feedburner!

  63. Bryan

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:24 pm

    Never used feedburner, just recently started using Google Reader but from what I’ve seen, they could use a good company to improve their RSS reader.

  64. youtubesearcher

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:37 pm

    to permanent hater

    “not such a great payday for each co-founder… $10M max for each”

    Are you serious, $10M not a great payday, what planet are you from ? or are you smokin too much youtube style aquisition.

    I doubt it is even $10M, probably more like $5M, but that is still downright awesome.

  65. P. G.

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:43 pm

    This toughens competition for Technorati.

  66. Morten K. Holst

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:48 pm

    Should be very interresting to see if Google will keep it the way it is now (and just add some ads) or if they’re going to take it waaaay further than that. Think about that stuff incorporated into Gmail, or at least the option to.

  67. starcraft 2 wallpaper

    May 23rd, 2007 at 2:50 pm

    Google is rapidly building his empire :)

  68. Brian Lash

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:03 pm

    @19

    Hey Jessica. I was referring to fact that a lot of bloggers use TLA’s Feedvertise to monetize their rss feeds — something you couldn’t do with Google before this acquisition.

    Hope we see that functionality soon.

  69. Sam Sethi

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:07 pm

    Thanks for confirming my scoop I have a few more on the way ;-) http://www.vecosys.com coming in the next few days.

  70. Amaiko

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:18 pm

    I’m FeedBurner User I Hope This Deal Will Be Finished

  71. Kevin Burton

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:27 pm

    Wow…. couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of guys either. Maybe when they get bored at Google they’ll come work for Tailrank :)

  72. Blake

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:43 pm

    Oh come on.. Google doesn’t want to own the internet, they just want to organize it, or get more revenue. “Search, ads, apps.” This purchase fits the bill.

  73. Sameer

    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:46 pm

    Big congratulations to Feedburner. Every interaction I’ve had with them has been a very good experience. Google is lucky to have this team join them.