Google gives away FeedBurner

You knew this was coming. Weeks after it paid $100 million for news-feed management company Feedburner, Google has removed all price tags from the company's services.

That's right: Bloggers, podcasters, and other publishers can now use Feedburner's "PRO" tools - TotalStats and MyBrand - without paying a penny.

Google has a habit of purchasing popular web services and promptly making them completely free to customers. It did the same thing with Picasa, SketchUp, Urchin (now Google Analytics) and Keyhole (Google Earth).

"One of the many benefits that FeedBurner publishers will enjoy now that FeedBurner is part of the Google family is a little something we like to call, 'more for free!'" read the announcement on the official Feedburner blog. "Not in the sense of soaring high above the clouds or recently sprung from the hoosegow, but free like you'll no longer gladly be billed on Tuesday for a burned feed today."

TotalStats provides feed publishers with extensive statistics, including the number of people who've viewed or clicked on each piece of a feed's content, while MyBrand gives publishers the power to serve feeds from their own customized url. Though both previously for-pay services are now completely free, publishers do have to actively sign-up for these tools in order to use them.

How's Google gonna make money off this FeedBurner purchase? Advertising, naturally. FeedBurner also offers the web's largest RSS feed and blog ad network. ®