Will you opt-out of allowing Google to service your Feedburner account?

After the feed stats company Feedburner is acquired by Google, the AdWords integration to feeds became the dominant discussion. Great! Your blog business can now be managed from a single Google interface right. This also means that your blog traffic data change hands. Feedburner puts a notice in their sign in interface saying that you have a right to opt-out, delete your data. If you take no action by June 15, 2007 (9 days as of today), the rights to your data will transfer from FeedBurner to Google.

“Service of FeedBurner publisher accounts will not be interrupted as a result of the acquisition by Google. You will have a 14-day interim period ending June 15, 2007 to opt-out of allowing Google to service your account. If you take no action by June 15, 2007, the rights to your data will transfer from FeedBurner to Google. Opting out will terminate your user agreement with FeedBurner, permanently delete your FeedBurner account, feeds, and all related statistical data and history, and prevent the transfer of your data rights to Google. To opt-out, contact us via accountx@feedburner.com, provide your FeedBurner account Username, and request to have your FeedBurner account deleted. We will contact you at your registered email address to confirm your deletion request before completing it.”

When YouTube acquired by Google no one asked YouTube users if they wanted to delete their YouTube account or videos. The same thing applies to all those small fish social data aggregating web 2.0 companies eaten by the whales (e.g., recently StumbleUpon swallowed by Ebay). It is of the Feedburner team that they are asking if we want to delete our accounts. Although I think that this notice is a legal enforcement to Feedburner since their clients are not only individuals but also companies.

So will you delete your Feedburner account?

I don’t think I will. Although I want to have control on my data, I can’t resist using Feedburner services currently (because of some embedded protocols). But watch us for an alternative action soon. I think this is an important moment to pay attention to how inhumane the data ownership laws in USA: One who aggregates data owns it.

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