And so another rumour comes true — with Google officially acquiring Feedburner — and another startup gets acquired by a giant. In journalism, that officially makes it a trend, since we can now add that deal to CBS buying Last.fm and eBay acquiring StumbleUpon. I confess that the Googleburner deal makes a whole lot more sense than either CBS.fm (which I think makes a little sense) and the eBayUpon deal (which makes very little). I wrote about the Googleburner rumours awhile back, after Sam Sethi at Vecosys broke the news. I know that this deal is only going to feed the “Google is too big and possibly evil” theorists, but I think that’s over-reacting just a tad. My friend Scott Karp has some thoughts at Publishing 2.0

According to Mike over at TechCrunch — confirming a rumour originally reported by Sam Sethi, ex- of TechCrunch UK — Google is close to acquiring Feedburner for $100-million. If true, this is a deal that makes sense to me, as it does to my friend Tony Hung from Deep Jive Interests and to Ash from Watchmojo. Feedburner is a great service with tons of useful features — many of which will no doubt plug in nicely to Google’s Analytics and other website tools — and so it’s no surprise that someone like Google would want them, even at what amounts to a 10-times revenue multiple, according to Ash. Valleywag also had the rumour, and the price tag, in a post last week.

Update:

Geek News Central seems to think that we should be afraid of Google owning Feedburner, but fails to make a convincing argument that we should be any more concerned about Google than we are about our ISPs knowing which websites we go to. Ashkan from Watchmojo also seems to think the deal is something we should be worried about, but I don’t see it. Alarm:clock has a look at the synergies for Google.

Remember that Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk and Spock went through some kind of rip in the space-time continuum and split into two personalities? There was good Kirk and bad Kirk, and you could tell the bad Kirk because he laughed maniacally and had a sash, and the bad Spock had a goatee. For some reason, I think of that episode sometimes when writing about Dave Winer, who helped develop RSS – which powers the newsfeed for this and other blogs – and was also involved in the genesis of podcasting.

As anyone who has read my previous posts on the subject knows, I have a fascination with Dave and his involvement in what is happening with RSS – not just because I’m interested in what happens in the syndication and feed/aggregator field, but because I find it incredible that after all this time one man’s personality is still getting in the way of so much. Whenever and wherever RSS is discussed, Dave Winer is the elephant at the table – a presence that dominates the discussion even if it isn’t mentioned.

Here’s good Dave, in a post on his blog that is aimed at newbies to the blogosphere:

“Someday, when you’re in the shower or lying in bed in the morning and get an idea that you wish you could tell everyone, remember that you have a blog, and go to the computer, and write it up and publish it. That actually feels pretty good, even if you think no one will read it, because you got it off your chest.

Kindly old Uncle Dave. You can almost picture him in a sweater by the fire. And then there’s bad Dave – the one with the sash and the goatee, who told Rogers Cadenhead that he was going to do everything he could to destroy the RSS Advisory Board because it was trying to mess with his creation:

“If anyone else decides to join up with [Rogers] on the terms of the old “advisory board” I will talk with each of them individually, until they see that it serves no purpose. This process will go on until Rogers gets the idea that it isn’t go to work. I may at some time send him a bill for all of my time that he is wasting.”

The soap opera continues, as Dave has managed to convince David Sifry of Technorati.com to resign from the board, and now has inserted himself into a conversation between Brad Feld of Mobius Capital, who wrote to Rogers (see his comment on Dave’s post) because he has investments in RSS-based companies such as Technorati, Feedburner.com and Newsgator.com – all of whom Dave sees as enemies. He has decreed that RSS must remain as it is, he refuses to admit that it might be broken, and he will take on all comers who say otherwise.

One long-time observer of the tech scene recently described Dave’s behaviour to me this way: “Now he’s added Newsgator to his list of kills,” said this person, who has known Dave for a long time. “This is getting to be like a serial killer. There is a sick fascination in watching him stalk his prey.” Let’s all bow our heads and pray for Brad Feld, and Rogers Cadenhead for that matter – and for RSS.

I’ve always liked Feedburner.com, and now I like it even more. Let’s face it, most people (including me) are consuming Web content through RSS feeds — whether they read them through NetNewsWire, Bloglines.com, Feeddemon, Newsgator.com, Yahoo’s new RSS mail add-on or (heaven forbid) Google’s ugly “web clips.” I wonder how many people actually go to websites any more, rather than just reading what journalists call “the wire.”

As far as I can tell, Feedburner was one of the first companies to see that this was going to take off — and that people were going to need a way to produce a feed without having to worry about whether it was RSS .90 or RSS 2.0 or Atom or whatever. They’ve added some new features called FeedFlare (hat tip to TechCrunch, as usual) that beef up your feed — adding links to send an item by email, send an email to the author, search for links in technorati.com, tag it with del.icio.us and see how many comments there are.

Feedburner hasn’t just been catering to blogs and micro-publishers either. They’ve also been doing deals with major old-world publishers, including the Houston Chronicle, and they just announced a partnership with Reuters, one of the largest news organizations in the world. It’s a smart move for Feedburner, and I would argue a smart move for the Chronicle and Reuters too.

For more, take a look at what Fred Wilson has to say (he loves it), and Read/Write Web too. And congrats to Brad Feld, an investor in Feedburner.