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The Case for Free Netbooks for Everyone?
Or, Can Google Subsidize a Netbook?
Over at the Chrome Techa blog, they ask if you'd take a free netbook from Google. I would. Why not? Chrome OS basically just runs Chrome. I use Chrome. So what's wrong with that? More machines accessing the net gives Google more revenue. Why? They have such pervasive advertising that simply getting more people online is good for them.
So, I got to thinking... how much would it cost for Google? A typical netbook is around $300 retail. My guess is that it's around $150 to the manufacturer, though maybe a little less. But, let's use that as a high end cost. So, if Google handed out a million netbooks, that would cost them around $150 million. For a company with nearly $22 billion in cash and short term investments, that's not really very much. And the idea is people are online more, so they make more money. They could hand out 100 million netbooks and still have more cash around than many companies -- that'd "only" cost $15 billion. And, I'm guessing, 100 million netbooks could fetch a small discount. ;)
But would Apple and Microsoft just roll over and die? Probably not. In fact, Apple has over $23 billion in cash and short term investments, while Microsoft is sitting on nearly $37 billion. There are just 304 million people in the US. Technically speaking, these three companies could subsidize netbooks for every single citizen -- and have cash left over. And, the idea being, they'd make money on each one and thus, come out in even better financial situations. Crazy, huh?
Sure, that probably doesn't make sense for them to do at that scale. There would also need to be pervasive Internet access for all which is, arguably, a much larger cost (maybe whitespace spectrum tech will solve that?). Still, it's an interesting concept that, if implemented on even a small scale, could really change computing for the masses. It'd be considered a disruptive marketing tactic -- something all of these companies have done.
Posted by Shane on December 4, 2009 3:15 PM | Permalink
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