No official word from Google yet, but one blogger (and hence, a slew of others piling on) is reporting that the search engine is in the final stage of buying Feedburner.



The news comes from TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, who confirms via "a source close to the deal" that Google dropped $100 million in cash on the table. Arrington says the deal should close in 2-3 weeks.

The rumor that Google was looking to pick up Feedburner began circulating last Friday, and was first confirmed by Valleywag's inside sources on Monday. The burning question, as posed on Valleywag, is "why would Google pay such a high multiple, about 10 times revenues, for the startup?"

One very interesting answer to that question is the affect Feedburner data could have on result relevancy. Since Feedburner is a subscription service, the acquisition could help Google to know better which blogs are legitimate and which ones are not.

Andy Beard goes on at length about the good and bad points for WebProNews. Though "not a huge number," Google would also acquire Feedburner's 422,000 + publishers and their subscribers.

Whatever Google's motivation, the acquisition would fit right in with the recent Silicon Valley zeitgeist – it's been an acquisition frenzy lately, especially from Google and Microsoft.

Google Feedburner Acquisitions