Google Dropping Windows For Internal Use
A report in the Financial Times claims that Google has begun moving users off of Windows systems and made it very difficult to get new ones. The move is cast as a security measure. Users are being shifted primarily on to Mac systems, but also to Linux.
Even prior to their brush with hackers from China late last year Google had a policy of moving users on to Google products where possible. The incidents accelerated the process. The story quotes Google employees to the effect that Windows systems are distrusted by definition at the company.
Something feels exaggerated in the story to me. First, from all indications we have in published reports, the system compromised at Google wasn't just a Windows system, but a Windows XP system running Internet Explorer 6 and logged in as Administrator. In other words, it was a system on which no serious effort at security was made. Banning all Windows systems because of this is surely an irrational overreaction.
