Despite Chinese Hack, Google Still Uses Microsoft Windows

In the wake of the late 2009 attack on Google's internal systems that saw Chinese hackers pilfer proprietary software code, the rumor was that the search giant had resolved to eliminate the use of Microsoft Windows on employee machines. But two years on, Google CIO Ben Fried tells Wired that Google never banned the use of Windows and that the company continues to offer Windows as one of the options available to new employees.
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In the wake of the late-2009 attack on Google's internal systems that saw Chinese hackers pilfer proprietary software code, the rumor was that the search giant was dumping Microsoft Windows.

A report from the New York Times indicated that Chinese hackers had infiltrated Google's infrastructure via an employee machine running Microsoft's instant messenger client, and in a later story, citing several unnamed Google employees, The Financial Times reported that Google was "phasing out" the use of Microsoft's Windows operating system in an effort to improve security, and that this would "effectively end" use of the OS inside the company.

According to one unnamed Google employee, the FT said, getting a new Windows machine required "CIO approval."

But two years on, Google CIO Ben Fried tells Wired that Google never banned the use of Windows and that the company continues to offer the Microsoft OSes on employee machines. Employees, he says, can choose from among a Mac, a Windows PC, a Google Chromebook, and a machine running Goobuntu, the company's modified version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

>At Google, employees can chose from four different operating systems: Mac OS, Chrome OS, Goobuntu, and, yes, Windows.

Fried does indicate that the China hack had some effect on the way its employees choose their machines. "We wanted people to think more about why they were choosing a particular operating system," he explains. But he says that tales of a Windows ban were well wide of the mark.

With its Google Apps suite of online business applications and its Chrome OS browser-based operating system, Google is pushing the world towards a new breed of online software that discards the old Windows model, and in many ways, it's succeeding. Google Apps is now used by over 4 million businesses. But the company's internal operation underlines the fact that the transition to a world of web-based software takes some time.

Although Google employees generally use Google Apps, Fried says that some employees still require the Microsoft Office suite, and he indicates that some people are just more comfortable with Windows. According to a Google spokesman, most of Google's Windows machines run Windows 7, the newest version of Microsoft's OS. "The vast, vast majority of our Windows machines are running Windows 7," he says. "But there are a very tiny handful (really, a negligible amount) of machines running older versions."

Presumably, these older versions of Windows are used to test various applications and web services.

Fried was unable to say what percentage of Google employees use what OS. But he did indicate that Goobuntu is widely used across the company, saying it's the OS of choice not for many Google engineers, but by various other employees, including some company lawyers. The company has said that even a small problem with an upgrade to a new version of the OS can cost the company upwards of $1 million, indicating that it's used by a large portion of its more than 24,000 employees.

Earlier this month, at a conference dedicated to Ubuntu, Google developer Thomas Bushnell -- who works under CIO Ben Fried -- detailed the company's use of Goobuntu, which has long been an open secret but was rarely discussed in public. According to Bushnell, Goobuntu is based on the LTS (long-term support) releases of Ubuntu, with modifications made to improve security and stability. Fried confirms that Google is currently using the "Lucid Lynx" version of Ubuntu (10.04), but that the company is moving to the "Precise Pangolin" release (12.04).

According to Bushnell, even the cook at his office building uses Goobuntu, and he indicates that "tens of thousands" of Google workstations run the OS.

A year ago, at Google's annual developer conference, co-founder Sergey Brin said that about 20 percent of Google employees were still on Windows, but he stressed that he did not know the exact percentage. Brin also said that Google hoped to move most of its employees to Chrome OS, which not only moves all applications to the browser but seeks to improve on the security of a desktop operating system.

Though Fried declined to comment on how prevalent any OS was within the company, a blanket move to Chrome OS is presumably years away at best. At least publicly, the OS is only available on notebooks, though Google has long said it's working on desktop Chrome OS machines as well.

Correction: This story originally said that Google Apps are used by 5 million business. Google's official number is 4 million.