Click to viewDigg users should be glad merger talks with Google have cooled, writes Slate's Farhad Manjoo. Had Digg fallen into Marissa Mayer's frosting-laced clutches, the site would have probably become another startup lost in what Manjoo calls "the Google Black Hole." It happened to FeedBurner this week. And the RSS ad network, was just the latest, following Jaiku, JotSpot, Dodgeball, GrandCentral, and Measure Map. Their tales of doom in the Googleplex, below.

Eight months ago, we posted an excerpt from a video former Feedburner CEO Dick Costolo's made in which he explains life after being acquired by Google. A standup comedian, Costolo plays the sad clown in the video, explaining that at Google he's got a significant job title, though "you can't tell by the words in it." Now that Google has killed FeedBurner's ad network, its reason for being, it's time to post Costolo's entire video. Note that Mr. Team Player didn't use YouTube.

Click to viewA year after Google bought RSS-feed ad network FeedBurner for a rumored $100 million, FeedBurner's death was announced informally in a Google Groups thread. Publishers are expected to use Google's own AdSense instead. CenterNetworks publisher Allen Stern explains his frustration in the above video: FeedBurner had built a business that could deliver high ad rates in large volume. With Google failing to meet the same metrics, the only winners are the FeedBurner execs who flipped their company.

Google prides itself on running its business by the numbers. But its FeedBurner unit, which tracks subscribers to RSS feeds, has laughably inaccurate numbers, writes venture capitalist and blogger Brad Feld. One out of six of his 117,000 RSS subscribers come from automated signups, he believes; those users rarely if ever read his blog. [Feld Thoughts]

Microsoft is asking News Corp. to help it buy Yahoo. Yahoo wants AOL and Google to help it remain independent. Meanwhile, writes VC blogger Fred Wilson, websites and services acquired by these companies like Flickr, AIM, Del.icio.us, Yahoo Groups, and FeedBurner continue to languish. Which is why Wilson thinks venture capitalists need a new path to liquidity besides flipping startups to a big company (too easy) and going public (too hard). He'd like to see a private-equity marketplace, where entrepreneurs can cash out without selling out. His 1,104-word argument cut down to size, below:

FeedBurner founder and current Googler Dick Costolo used to be a stand-up comedian. Somebody isn't laughing.

Dick Costolo used to be CEO of FeedBurner, a Chicago startup which publishes RSS feeds for websites. But then FeedBurner got acquired by Google. Now Costolo's got a "significant title" at Google, though, as he explains in this you video, "you can't tell by the words in it." Even before FeedBurner, Costolo used to work the standup mic. Here's the best Woody Allen impression you've ever seen. Laugh it up, fellow Googlers, but remember, there's truth in jest. How does Costolo really feel about Google? He posted the video to his blog using Tumblr and Vimeo, not the Google-owned Blogger and YouTube.

In private moments, Dodgeball cofounder Dennis Crowley will tell any startup entrepreneur in New York asking: Avoid getting acquired by Google. "Sure, he's not upset about the $40 million and he's glad to be dating models," a source close to Crowley told me. "But he's not happy with Google." Not all Google-acquired founders are so bitter. Word is the FeedBurner guys love it at Google. But FeedBurner's best innovations are in advertising, not engineering. Some say the same goes for Google these days. (Photo by rosswerks)

While other startup founders have to stay home and, you know, work, these guys have the time and the spare $3,000 to spend hanging out at a zero-agenda conference in Hawaii. (For the record, we're jealous.) Spotted in Yahoo executive Bradley Horowitz's Flickr stream: Benchmark entrepreneur-in-waiting Nirav Tolia; "stepped-up" LinkedIn chairman Reid Hoffman; FeedBurner founder Dick Costolo, who's rolling in Googlebucks; Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale; Evan Williams from Twitter; Mashery's Oren Michels; and
Kevin Rose (and his new haircut) from Digg with Joshua Schachter from the Yahoo-owned Del.icio.us. One question: Is this really Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg? I don't recognize him looking so unnerdly. (Photo by: bradley23)

Ego-blogger Robert Scoble,TechCrunch proprietor Michael Arrington, and others along with many of their followers whiled away the weekend manually tallying up RSS-feed subscriber numbers via Google's Reader application for popular blogs. Why?

Can we, at last, put to rest any whispers by jealous Sand Hill Road rivals about the strengths of Fred Wilson's portfolio? The New York-based venture capitalist, a partner at Union Square Ventures, has ably spotted the most profitable segments of targeted marketing and online publishing, from social bookmarks (Del.icio.us, sold to Yahoo) to RSS-feed advertising (FeedBurner, sold to Google) and now, behavioral ad-targeting firm Tacoda, sold to AOL for a reported price of more than $200 million. This deal is more than just a financial win for Wilson — it's a vindication of his entire strategy. Here's why.

Not that you care about one startup buying another, especially when it's already on that ubiquitous Web 2.0 blog TechCrunch, but RSS marketing network Feedburner bought blog analytic company Blogbeat. Blogbeat's homepage has a rundown of the deal. (We previously thought Feedburner bought Nooked, as posted here.)

A few readers say Nooked isn't the lucky little company to get snapped up by RSS marketing powerhouse Feedburner, despite an earlier report. It's actually buying a US startup that was once close to a deal with Yahoo.

Update: Rumor disconfirmed — this was a bum tip.

"I was walking down Valencia Street," says a friend of Valleywag. "Some dude on his phone, yacking. I walked closer to listen, and I heard, 'Feedburner will announce an acquisition.'"

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