Google has made an interesting internal decision extremely public indeed: it is to completely phase out the use of Microsoft Windows on its workers’ desktop machines, claiming the operating system represents an unacceptable security risk.
As reported over on The Financial Times, Google’s long-held stance that its employees should be free to choose whatever operating system they feel most comfortable with on their desktops will come to a sudden, screeching halt: while you’ll still have the choice of a Mac or a PC, you’ll have to run Linux or Mac OS X.
According to an un-named Google employee, the move is an official decision from the higher-ups that “we’re not doing any more Windows[, as] it is a security effort” and that already “many [employees] have been moved away from [Windows-based] PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks [against Google.]”
While Mac OS appears to be the operating system of choice – possibly for its out-of-the-box, pre-configured ease of use – employees are also given the option to run a flavour of Linux. Again, an un-named employee states that “Linux is open source and we feel good about it[, but] Microsoft we don’t feel so good about.”
The news is something of a disaster for Microsoft: with such a large company – and one seen as a trend-setter and trailblazer for the industry as a whole – making the concious decision to avoid the use of Windows altogether for security reasons, it could start to find its traditional iron grip on the corporate desktop market starting to weaken.
Do you believe that Microsoft has anything to worry about following Google’s decision to drop Windows, or is this just posturing by Google as a response to Microsoft’s rival Bing search engine? Share your thoughts over in the forums.