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Watch Google Buy FreshBooks

FreshBooks is a noteable Canadian accounting startup that is widely acknowledged to have elevated online accounting apps to a new plateau in terms of ease of use and effectiveness. They’ve got an API, a rational/cheap/flexible pricing schedule, lots of users (250k!), a blog, and a well-rounded feature set.

So, when Read/Write Web and Jay Eye Sea suggest that Google has the motivation, resources, and market opportunity to get into online accounting, I say they’re going to pull a Feedburner/YouTube and just buy the best-of-breed that’s out there already. In doing so, they’ll get a great product, and great team, and a revenue stream.

What’s stopping them?

accounting, acquisitions, feedburner, freshbooks google

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Google Buying Feedburner; Feeds are another media like Radio, Print, or WWW

TC breaks it: GOOG is buying Feedburner for 100M. WatchMojo covers the origins of FB’s 10 million in VC funding, DeepJive says it only makes sense, and SEW sums up some good advantages for Google.

Holistic Analytics and Advertising

From where I’m sitting, it make sense. Feeds have been out in left field for a long time in terms of a consistent means of measuring their audience and impact on site traffic; with this acquisition and their existing analytics portfolio, Google has a means to connect all of the dots and create a truly holistic means of looking at sites.

Of course this also means that Google can expand their ad inventory as well, offering feeds as another media channel to advertisers. Feeds have evolved into another “media,” so to speak, and as Google has tried to expand into print and radio, so they are taking a stab at RSS.

Creepy

One final thought: as is mentioned more and more, Google’s reach is sort of creeping me out. The Internet is increasingly at the mercy of Google’s “Don’t be Evil” motto - here’s hoping they stick to it.

analytics, feedburner, google, news, rss, stats techcrunch

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