How are you enjoying that free Android software that powers your iPhone-competing smart phone?

I hope you like it enough to reimburse Google $10 a year, because that’s what Google CEO Eric Schmidt is hoping to get out of each Android user:

“If we have a billion people using Android, you think we can’t make money from that?” Schmidt asked rhetorically. All it would take, he said, is $10 per user per year.

Did you just feel a small pain in your wallet?

OK, relax.

Google doesn’t want you to actually hand over ten bucks a year to use Android, but that’s the nominal amount it says it needs to earn from each user, in order to add a nice supplement to its search engine revenue. That could come from any kind of distribution deal or premium apps that you might pay for.

And any amount it can earn from Android would certainly help it to finally cast off that “one trick pony” tag that appears to be relentlessly applied to the search giant. And, based on the number of people that tweet to me about their love of their Android phone, I suspect that Google has a good shot at getting the income from Android it so dearly craves.