James Delahunty
30 Oct 2010 22:55
A Google executive has said that Google's quiet acquisition of Android Inc. several years ago was the best deal the company has ever struck since its beginning.
The comments were made by David Lawee, vice president of corporate development at Google, at the 16th annual Stanford Accel Symposium. He said that when the search giant buys up a company, it is up to the entrepreneurs to make it a success under the Google umbrella.
Google bought Android for an estimated $50 million back in 2005. Android Inc. was a wireless software start-up that was founded by Andy Rubin.
"I saw this guy in my building for two years, walking his dog, and I was like, I hope this guy does something," said Lawee. "It's obvious when the deal doesn’t work out, because the people leave. That's the key metric: Is the technology being used? A lot of it depends on the perseverance of the team coming in."
Rubin did stick around with Google to champion the development of the open source Android operating system for mobile handsets. It now is one of the most used operating systems in handsets.
Google profits from mobile ads displayed on Android handsets. It recently revealed that mobile ads are now a $1 billion annual business for the web giant.