By buying Feedburner, Google is doing many things:

- it is acquiring the leading RSS network,
- it is adding that much more value to Google Analytics, formerly Urchin,
- it is allowing Ad Sense to move into RSS ads,
- it is moving away from its promise not to encroach on organic results.

Increasingly: Feedburner’s web pages are listed high in the search engine results pages (SERPs). 

By buying YouTube - which rightfully - pops up high in SERPs’ top page, Google pushed its way onto organic results.  This might seem unimportant, but when Google introduced “Tips” (essentially its answer to Yahoo!’s shortcuts), the vocal minority amongst bloggers and industry types was “google was being evil,” which was a retarded argument for Google is a for profit corporation and it will pursue what is best for it.

By buying Feedburner - at 10 times revenue - Google is doing many things, one of which is moving slowly inside the organic results.

And, on a side note, if some of the conspiracy theorists are right, then Sequoia-backed Mahalo.com will also start to appear in the first page of Google’s rankings, and when Sequoia pulls another “YouTube sells to Google” type of deal, Google will have a third listing that will have a propensity to pop up at the top of the charts.