TechCrunch announced today that Google purchased the ever-popular FeedBurner for $100 million. Rumors have been going around for days, and it seems that they are now all but officially confirmed from Google or FeedBurner.

The assumption regarding Google’s decision to purchase FeedBurner is most likely due to the constantly growing popularity in RSS feed utilization among the Internet population. As more users read feeds, less pages are visited, and less on-site ads are displayed by services like AdSense. By purchasing FeedBurner, Google will be able to profit from ads integrated into feeds in addition to their current advertising service revenue streams.

Furthermore, there is speculation that Google will offer Analytics integration with RSS feeds and ads within the feeds. This would allow for a much greater understanding specifics about our readers as publishers, allowing us to better target our visitors’ interests and needs. Google will be able to do the same with their feed advertising service as they have done so well to date with AdSense.

Vecosys also speculates that the purchase by Google will benefit from FeedBurner’s FeedFoundry application, which is used by large-scale businesses including USA Today and Dow Jones. Below is an excerpt from the FeedBurner website about the purpose of the FeedFoundry application.

FeedFoundry allows publishers to easily manage large sets of feeds across multiple properties, track circulation and ad performance in aggregate and make real-time adjustments to improve the reach and profitability of their syndicated content. It is the industry’s only service that tracks audience engagement of distributed media across properties.

The only question remains as to when changes will begin to be seen by the public eye on the FeedBurner website or within published feeds.