Google has acquired RSS specialist Feedburner for around $100m.

Feedburner’s customers are said to include the Wall Street Journal, the BBC and Amazon. Retailers and travel agents are now sending promotional offers to online customers via Feedburner.

Google sees the technology as opening the way for its huge array of advertisers to reach some of the most active groups of Web users, like social networkers, or the growing numbers using mobile phones.

Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice president of product management wrote in her blog, “We’re constantly looking for ways to identify and offer new tools for content creators and Web site publishers,” adding that the purchase helps it provide new tools for its customers.

Feedburner’s analytics also help Web publishers know who reads their sites, as well as embedded advertising in RSS feeds.

Feedburner Co-founder and Chief Executive Dick Costolo told reporters on a conference call, “It is going to get more and more important for publishers to have this round-trip view of their audience.” Costolo is joining the Google board.

This is just the latest in a series of rapid moves by Google to consolidate the fast-growing online advertising market. The deal will expand Google’s existing blog advertising service, AdSense into feeds.

CNN reports, “Feedburner counts more than 430,000 Web site publishers as users of RSS. A total of 736,000 RSS feeds, including roughly 110,000 audio or video feeds, are delivered to readers as publishers update their Web sites, the company said. The 30-employee company will remain based in Chicago.

“Feedburner has raised $10 million from Mobius Venture Capital, Portage Venture Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Union Square Ventures. ”

Google’s purchase of internet advertising giant DoubleClick means it also owns one of the biggest SEO companies in the world.

Performics is a search marketing company and may present a conflict of interest to Google, since the goal of Performics is to rank their clients highly on the search engines.

Search Engine Journal lists Performics clients as :

America Online, Blair Corp., Bose, Cingular, CompUSA, Eddie Bauer, Fairmont Hotels, HP Shopping, J. Jill, Jos. A. Banks, Kohl’s, L.L. Bean, Motorola, OfficeMax, PC Connection, RedEnvelope, My Sony, Quickbook, Staples, Verizon Wireless, and Wyndham Hotels.

Such services offered by Performics include paid search marketing, ‘natural’ search engine optimization and data feed marketing.

Google’s FAQ on the buy includes the following Q&A :

Q. What will Google do with Performics?
A. Performics is part of DoubleClick, and we are acquiring it as part of the transaction. We have no plans to dispose of it at this time.

With Google clamping down on text link ads and other optimization activities, isn’t this all a tad tacky?

Or is there something we’re not being told — yet?

In an interesting piece of soothsaying, Jason Calacanis, the “formerly” man par excellence, predicts that Google will release not only a cheap PC in 2007, but also an operating system.

“He [Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO] also told me they would never do a OS or a PC. Well, Dell is bundling Google apps with their PCs now, and I predict that in 2007 Google will release an Operating System and a super discount PC. Think, a $300-400 PC all-in-on unit that is sold at cost in order to make money off of their services.”

In a further chilling message for Microsoft, he says, “The next upgrade cycle for Office is dead in the water thanks to the Google Office suite.”

Scary.

So they did it. Despite the warnings of corporate lawyers and internet icons like Mark Cuban and Jason Calacanis, Google has bought YouTube for more than one billion dollars. Here’s the official announcement :

“Google announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community. […]”

It should be said that Jason has since come round and now applauds Google’s move, largely, he says, because Google is the only bigco that could make it work.

We shall see.