About Me 0068: Making Money Without

After their victory in the Napoleonic Wars, the victors -- the Brits and the Prussians and their hangers-on -- demanded an indemnity of 700,000,000 francs from the defeated French. Newly installed Louis XVIII and his courtiers didn't have a clue what to do. But Paris investment banker Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard had an idea. Don't borrow from the rich in France with a compulsory loan, he said. Don't raise taxes. Float a bond issue in London and borrow the money from the victors. Everyone thought the guy was crazy. But he wasn't. British banker Barings and Amsterdam banker Hope & Co. were happy to syndicate a loan for the French in the city. The bond issue sold out, and the prices of French rentes went up. Everyone made lots of money, and best of all, Louis XVIII got himself and the French people out of a jam so they could go on to lose three wars to the Germans in less than a century.

Andy Rubin, the VP of engineering at Google responsible for mobile, has revealed that the company’s rapidly expanding Android operating system would be profitable if it was broken out as its own business.

Asked by The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference in San Francisco if the division is making money for the search giant, Rubin responded affirmatively with a “yes.”

Mossberg pressed on the issue, noting that class='blippr-nobr'>Google’sclass="blippr-nobr">Google mobile revenue still primarily comes via ads from Google mobile search — searches that occur both on class='blippr-nobr'>Androidclass="blippr-nobr">Android devices and iPhone and other platforms (i.e., Google would be making that money with or without Android).

Rubin conceded that “there’s no way would’ve ever been profitable as a startup company,” (Rubin sold Android to Google in 2005) but says that the resources provided by Google’s enormous advertising revenue streams and the ability to offer Android open source have allowed Android to pursue a business model that’s become profitable.

Although Rubin wouldn’t break out exactly how Android makes money, he did reveal that there are now 172 phones on the market running Android, the latest of which, the Nexus S, was revealed earlier today. That’s a lot more smartphones that drive a lot more mobile searches, and presumably, that’s how Rubin’s math adds up.

Rubin credited Android’s success to its open source model, making it easy for any manufacturer or carrier to offer devices, saying “It’s … frictionless for OEMs no matter where they’re doing the manufacturing … without a contractual relationship or having money change hands.”

He did concede, however, that the Nexus One business model — offering unlocked phones direct to consumers via the web — was not a good business one for Google to pursue and that the provisioning and activation of mobile phones is best left to the carriers. “We thought it would be better to spend our resources on things like Gingerbread,” (the latest Android OS) he said.

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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Making Money Without

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