Regarding the amount he makes from the terminals and service, I don't doubt that's the major haul of any given year, year after year.

Not coincidentally, that's why I take his pontificating about finance and economics with a grain of salt - he was a tech savvy info delivery man who lucked into trapping people into a dog-shit ugly, expensive, and industry ubiquitous device.

It's along the lines of "I'll view Google as more than just an extremely successful ad agency when they make money on their other projects" which might not seem fair, but cuts through a lot of the enigma-like perspectives regarding tech firms.

In that case, you'd really enjoy Charlie Munger's parable about the Shoebutton Prince.

The story goes that one of Charlie's distant relatives had cornered some part of the 1920's shoebutton market. Back then, shoebuttons were smallish ornaments you put on your shoes.

The success entitled the prince to pontificate on any and all things in unlimited fashion--especially those outside the realm of shoebuttons.

I do believe I would enjoy that parable because I think it happens a lot in the US culture. You know like listening to, ahem, certain anti-vaccine people simply because they were in a nudie magazine and on the TV for a while.

I don't agree with a lot of his political views but I'll trust him on the finance and economics front over a majority of politicians given that he worked for Salomon Brothers and arguably was an extremely well-accomplished mayor. Bloomberg is arguably a technology company delivering a product for the finance sector but he absolutely had the prerequisite domain knowledge to launch the company and propel it into what it is today.

Oh I agree regarding the business savvy and intelligence to put out a successful product and maintain a market share. The guy did an absolutely fabulous job of it, and I'm not sure it could be replicated.

Although, having worked in municipal finance on the Street for a couple years (somewhat back office, somewhat deal support) I can honestly say that a lot of the systems and information in certain sectors is pretty dated. As in, not very good by modern standards. The MSRB is trying with EMMA - but because there's no fiscal / competitive reward like in Bloomberg's info providing case, rather it's for regulatory and market stability - but a lot of stuff was still pretty old school.

I've designed an "Information as a Service" program targeting some of the most lucrative sectors in public finance (construction, transportation, education, etc) but still haven't mastered the design / handshakes with needed sources (ex. Thompson Reuters) to really call it ready to debut. Another issue is finding the right price point - Bloomberg's got a racket going, I'd just want to hit a good spot where most businesses could afford access, or put it at a value premium where having the information before others (arranged/conditioned by the system) would be worth larger expense. Eh, good times!

You can't only consider the ads, you have to consider what makes the ads valuable, which includes whatever brings the eyeballs and walking fingers in.

For example: * Magazines provide content in their subject area. * Yahoo: provides content apps and content.

So, you mean like the concept of a "loss leader" like when Best Buy sells new release under cost (ex. $9.99) then wants to sell the same customer a brand new $3,000 4K HDTV?

according to wikipedia roughly 315,000 so that's 7.9 billion dollars a year. what a fucking racket... holy moly

What you pay for is not a mere data aggregater, it's practically everything you'll ever need in a single system. It wouldn't cost that much if it was just 'S,' it's something much more valuable.

I always suspected the cost was a function of the profits of the firms using them.

I think it is a smart move to force bundle the hardware and form the users' keystroke habits over a career. I imagine the switching costs are extreme.

I'm not a trader. I'm actually a programmer and just curious about a lot of things. One day, I contacted Thomson Reuters and asked to try their competing system, I think it was Elektron. It is a pure software system that I got bored with after a few days of exploring.

Probably Eikon? Elektron is Reuters' real-time data play, Eikon has much more of the news/data/analysis functionality of BB. It's terrible marketing, even from their pages it's pretty hard to differentiate [1] [2]

[1] http://financial.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/data-analyti... [2] http://financial.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/tools-applic...

Yep - that's the one. I remember it was slow and seemed to be built with either Java or Flash or something crazy.

I think you might be mixing up your months and years.

That and allegedly insider information gleaned from them? I never heard much more about those allegations.

Any insider information which came with a Bloomberg terminal would be practically worthless. Every trader would have it.

You're probably confusing the sharing of insider information via the IM feature, which definitely does happen. But blaming Bloomberg for that makes about as much sense as blaming Apple for terrorists using iPhones.

The accusation is that Bloomberg uses data from the people using the terminals to inform their own trades. It popped up a little while back but I can't find the original articles.

Back in 2013 (actually surprised it was that long ago):

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/10/bloomberg-goldm...

> The Guardian also understands that JP Morgan also has concerns about how Bloomberg used information from its terminals while pursuing stories about Bruno Iksil, the trader known as the London Whale, who was blamed for massive losses at the bank last year. Bloomberg said it had blocked journalists' access to client data within 24 hours of receiving a complaint from Goldman.

Interestingly, Goldman Sachs recently launched its own "Bloomberg Terminal killer", Symphony: http://qz.com/501783/the-goldman-sachs-backed-bloomberg-term...

Funny quote from the QZ article:

> At a cost of more than $20,000 per year per terminal, Bloomberg is an extremely expensive system for users mostly interested in its chat features.

In the early 00's I worked for a company that had a Bloomberg chat killer too.

Everyone is misunderstanding you. You're accusing Bloomberg of using data mined from the usage of the Bloomberg keyboard in order to make more informed trades.

Strange, I don't think my firm's subscription came with that feature.

Oh god, that is some crazy info, is it illegal for them to trade on the terminal data?