Android has been under a lot of heat lately from some of the leading mobile companies such as Sprint. Google’s Android platform seems to be an open target for negativity. Microsoft has jumped on the bandwagon with reports that they find Android to be financially unsound.

The other day Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, spoke at Australian telecoms company Telstra’s annual investment day, he was quick to dismiss Google all together saying, “They can hire smart guys, hire a lot of people… but, you know, they start out way behind in a certain sense.” This comes as a surprise to me as Google has continued to outshine Microsoft in the past, overcoming them on many top ten lists.

Ballmer questioned Google’s ability to make money from this mobile platform as he went on to say, “I don’t really understand their strategy. Maybe somebody else does. If I went to my shareholder meeting, my analyst meeting, and said: ‘Hey, we’ve just launched a new product that has no revenue model!’… I’m not sure that my investors would take that very well. But that’s kind of what Google’s telling their investors about Android,”

In a perfect world for large companies such as Microsoft, making money is all that really matters in the end. What they don’t realize is that open source is not about raking in the money, it is about creating something and then allowing others to partake of it as they see fit. Google is getting many more search hits with the integration of search in Android. Ballmer argues that Google’s Android is doing well for its first generation of phones, but when it comes down to it, how will it do in the third and fourth generations? We want to know what you think about the comments made by the CEO of Microsoft, dismissing Android yet again.

[Via ZDNet]