Most companies buy other companies to acquire a (sometimes once or future) profitable service they offer and to make that cash-flow their own. Google seems to have a different approach; they buy companies and then make the formerly premium services free. That’s exactly what they are doing with one of their newest acquisitions, FeedBurner.

Don’t get me wrong, Google is still all about making money, it’s just that a lot of the purchases they make seem to be more about bolstering their own cash-cows, AdSense and AdWords. They don’t think twice about potentially giving back millions in profits on premium services if they know that in return it could ultimately mean more eyeballs on the screen glued to their advertisements, raking in billions for them.

Google may be huge but they don’t seem to be all that greedy – I emphasize seem there because it could very well be that they do desire the dollar just as much as anyone, they are just very smart and calculating in the ways and means to best obtain it. You have to respect that on some level.

But all of this is just talk. As usual, Google has us all at FREE.

[UPDATE]: FeedBurner has finally gotten around to making an official announcement – 8 hours or so after they had rotating banners up on their site announcing the change. I didn’t break any embargo in posting this last night, just simply saw the banners.