Google Replacing Windows 7 Campus Computers With Macs

John Brownlee ()

Google Replacing Windows 7 Campus Computers With Macs

According to a report in the Financial Times, Google is so fed up with Windows 7’s woeful security issues that they are now taking Redmond’s operating system by the pants seat and unceremoniously hurtling it from the building.

What machines are employees getting instead? Linux rigs… and Macs.

Google’s move might be related to the recent flurry of attacks against the GMail accounts of political dissidents launched by China earlier in the year, which resulted in Google demanding the end of Internet censorship in China and withdrawing when they (predictably) didn’t get their way. Those attacks largely emanated from a security vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

But employees interviewed for the Financial Times piece suggest that while employees are being given the option of picking a Mac, what they really want is for employees to opt for Linux… specifically their Linux-based Chrome operating system.

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“Before the security, there was a directive by the company to try to run things on Google products. It was a long time coming,” said one employee.

If true, Google’s tolerance for Macs on campus now might soon become another rout as the entire organization switches over to Chrome… an outcome especially likely if the product war between Google and Apple gets any bloodier.

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About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in Mac, News |

  • Eddie
  • Michael Kleinpaste

    Stupid review of it really. Bad form specifying Windows 7 as Google hasn’t, but this article is relatively accurate. The idiot at ithinkdiff makes even more wild claims of Google using Windows XP w/IE 6. Twaddle at best.

    Google’s making a good move. I support that POS (windows) and I’d love to do exactly the same.

  • Darwin

    Plenty of Apple competitors use Macs internally like Motorola. Macs are far the preferred platform among IT people at Motorola, Oracle, Cisco, and Google as I can tell you from personal experience. Chrome is along way from being ready for anything from web browsing and it is not a preferred platform at Google. Nobody is writing code on a chrome os for example.

  • Darwin

    I replied to Eddie with this;
    “You have anger issues. You have made as many or more assumptions as the “fanboys”. I can tell you from personal experiencer that Windows 7 is used at Google, you are assuming XP, and you are wrong. Configuration and support of any version of Windows is complicated and costly and Windows 7 is a security nightmare. Not as much as previous version but still a leaky sieve. Try supporting thousands of copies. It’s a little different from your iMac. Duh.”

  • http://www.allyourapple.com Joshua

    This seems more like early promotion of their new OS rather than a legitimate security concern. Granted, I’m not sure I’d call Windows the MOST secure OS out there, bu tit’s certainly come a long way.