As if we needed any more proof that the Android mobile OS is taking the world by storm.

Senior VP of Mobile at Google and one of the lead developers for Android, Andy Rubin, Tweeted Wednesday that Android is now being activated at the rate of 700,000 times per day.

This number is up from a similar Tweet by Rubin, when he said that the Android OS was being activated 500,000 times per day only last June. Horace Dediu at graphic analysis blog Asymco estimates that the Android OS has been downloaded between 224 million and 253 million times.

Even accounting for the 1.3 million downloads of iPhone 4s in the first three days of its availability, Apple will not likely challenge the number Tweeted by Rubin.

But those numbers notwithstanding, there is still a lot of debate among very smart people in the world of tech concerning the level of Android's profitability, given that it's an open source OS. Yes, it is a popular OS, but as one (brilliantly written) report points out, we've already seen significant mods made to the version of Android used on the Kindle Fire, which redirects users directly to the Amazon App Store rather than to Google's market.android.com.

Amazon is not currently in the smart phone business, but rumors have suggested that Facebook might be soon, in which case their possible use of a modified version of Android, one which benefits Facebook's financial interest as opposed to Google's, could undercut the significance of such numbers as those Tweeted by Andy Rubin today.

This is all to say, the tech world is a strange, strange place, one full of mystery and wonder, even in financial terms.

[Image Credit: Asymco]