Google ditches Windows on security concerns

[megaman821]

Is there any evidence that Windows 7 is less secured than Snow Leopard? Windows employs more advanced security techniques. IE has outlasted Safari in Pwn2Own since IE8. Windows releases security fixes much faster.

If they favor OS X over Windows that is completely fine, but I think they are implying something that isn't true in regards to security. If someone exploits OS X on them, is everyone moving to Linux next?

[Retric]

Security contests are poor measures of security. A "new" windows flaw is a valuable commodity and most people who are aware of such things are not going to use them to "win" a contest. In the real world there are three issues, systems that are not up to date, systems that are more open than ideal, and unknown issues.

The ideal contest wold take a reasonably permissive system that's 3 months out of date and see how long that lasts under normal usage.

[tptacek]

No. There is no evidence that Windows 7 is less secure than Mac OS X Snow Leopard --- at least, not clear evidence (we could certainly spend a few days tit-for-tat'ing about this disclosure or that, but it wouldn't amount to a coherent argument).

[melling]

Market share: Windows 90%, Mac 9%, Linux 1%.

Where are virus writers going to put most of their effort?

Windows being as secure as Mac wouldn't help make it safer because a lot more implemented exploits are going to exist in the wild.

[RyanMcGreal]

Mac OSX is inferior from a security standpoint, but enjoys herd immunity so the actual risk of infection is lower.

[memoryfault]

And what happens when someone exploits Linux?

[xpaulbettsx]

"Many people have been moved away from [Windows] PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks"

Wait, so they're phasing out Windows for security reasons, and moving to Mac instead? It at least made sense when they were moving to Linux or ChromeOS, but OS X's security track record as of late is far worse than Windows.

[maukdaddy]

Citation? I haven't seen anything near the equivalent of Windows flaws on OS X. How many remotely exploitable OS X vulnerabilities have there been in the last 2 years?

[johnl]

I would agree. Windows has the largest population of non-computer literate people worldwide so hackers get the bigest bang for their buck and windows gets a bad rap. If everyone jumps to another OS so will the security problems.

[dmn001]

Regardless of the security record, it is often the case that hackers and virus writers target the most popular OS. So I don't see how all switching to the same OS is a good idea for security.

[brg]

This was done by two company vips in direct opposition to the very vocal recommendation of the security team.

[dejb]

The danger here is that they will lose touch with the 80% of their user base that uses windows. If they don't have enough people who intimately understand the computing experience of their users then their products could suffer.

[amalcon]

They will almost certainly still have some windows machines around, if only for testing against IE. Some Google employees almost certainly use Windows at home. I really don't think they're going to lose anything major in terms of familiarity.

[sjs]

You mean intimately understanding feelings of frustration and annoyance?

ducks

Seriously though, I'm sure that the folks who are allowed to use Windows are exactly the ones who need it: Picasa and Chrome devs (and the other desktop apps they have).

[budu3]

True. A very strange decision. How to you develop products for the majority of people when you don't use their OS and can't relate to their 'pain'.

[stcredzero]

Exactly this happened at a company I worked for! The engineers were too snobbish to use Windows, sticking with their Solaris and Linux boxen instead. Result? Windows user experience sucked. Further result -- Windows workstations forced on the engineers. Further result -- "Hey, this thing really does suck on Windows!"

[Raphael_Amiard]

That's why virtual machines exists i would say.

[johngunderman]

they are not saying that they are getting rid of all windows machines full stop, they are saying that none of their employers can use windows machines as their dev machine / work machines. They don't want to expose any private data to the windows machines. They certainly will keep around some windows boxen for testing purposes.

[hamedh]

i'm sure they would still run windows under virtualization with vmware fusion, etc. they would still would have to do very heavy testing of IE on their apps, so that would be the easiest way to do it. i don't think google can escape the suffering of writing for IE just yet

[samstokes]

"Getting a new Windows machine now requires CIO approval," said another employee.

I really hope that's quoted out of context (e.g. maybe it's really getting a second machine, regardless of OS, that requires CIO approval?).

I doubt we're getting the whole story here. I'm sure there are everyday tasks that can be done more effectively on Windows (I've been Linux-only for a couple of years now, so I can't imagine what they are, but I'm sure they exist). And "Windows isn't secure" is absurdly simplistic (particularly at a company which can presumably hire the best sysadmins in the business). Constraining your employees like that to save the IT department a little effort doesn't sound like a good tradeoff.

I'd speculate this is more about politics, or dogfooding. Maybe they're trying to move employees from Office to Google Apps, and that's easier if Office is no longer available.

[melling]

Lots of new Mac and Linux users. Hopefully, some of the people will be dedicating some of their 20% time to improving the Mac and Linux platforms.

[MichaelApproved]

Rumor has it, the China hack was an inside job. Moving to a different OS probably wouldn't stop that kind of break in.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/was_google_an_inside_jo...

[redstripe]

The big hack was apparently based on a zero day IE flaw. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/hack-of-adob

Wouldn't it be easier to make their employees use chrome?

[thought_alarm]

Sure, but there's only one way to completely uninstall IE and it sounds like that's exactly what they're doing.

[desigooner]

I'd have assumed that Google Chrome or Firefox would have been default browsers at Google considering their involvement.

[solidus]

Much easier. They could for example setup Active Directory policies to disable the use of IE by default.

[Zak]

I'm a bit surprised that there was significant internal use of Windows at Google. I had the impression that most PCs there ran Linux.

[brown9-2]

Let's not ignore non-technical employees.

[ghurlman]

Something tells me that the senior staff at Google was also surprised, and somebody's making this move (or was told to make this move) to save their job.

[jonknee]

Well they did introduce their browser as Windows only at first... They have a lot of non-technical people who probably opt to use at whatever they used before (Windows).

[viraptor]

> which employs more than 10,000 workers internationally

I thought the number was higher. Wikipedia says 20,621 (2010)... still thought it was higher.

[Raphael]

20621 is greater than 10000.

[ratsbane]

As Google still develops and tests for Windows I question that line about needing CIO approval for any Windows machine. Still, great to hear.

[solidus]

I agree--I think the google employee either didn't know what he was talking out or was taken out of context.

They could always do windows development and testing inside of VMs though.

[thought_alarm]

Such a policy would only apply to non-engineering staff, obviously.

[dualboot]

There are a lot of great comments in here.

I also see another possible angle on this.

What is the actual windows system usage at google currently? It might already be low enough to represent a serious time-sink for IT/security because it's already a serious minority?

It makes a lot of sense to maintain somewhat complex policies and management for a vast network of Windows based systems and servers. It is entirely different when you're looking at trying to keep a handful of systems in-line when they are not your primary focus.

Obviously this is purely speculative but trying to look at it from another perspective.

[gmlk]

The main reason a Mac user (in practical terms) is more secure then a Windows user is because Mac users typically are using the latest version of the OS, whereas an typical Windows user is at least one SP behind, maybe more?. Especially if said Windows sits in an office environment where there is a very slow adaption rate.

Also, any unauthorized copy of Windows is most likely never updated.

[lelele]

The main reason a Mac user is more secure than a Windows one is because a Mac system is running on a sounder security architecture (not administrator by default, etc.). You can only go that far in retrofitting an OS which made the wrong decisions on the start.

[memoryfault]

Security in software is relative. Everything is vulnerable. If someone wants to hack into Google's super-secret data and Google is running Linux or Mac OS X, then the hackers will find exploits in that software. This article is a joke for implying that this switch will in any way make them more secure.

[sorbus]

If they're using Linux, they can find and patch the vulnerability immediately. They could even have a team hunting through the source code looking for vulnerabilities to patch.

On Windows, they would have to report the vulnerability to Microsoft, and hope that it's patched soon. It probably would be, but that's still an extra step - and they wouldn't be able to locate it with reference to the code. Also, as another person mentioned, china has access to the Windows source code; Google doesn't. This evens the playing field.

[abrahamsen]

Does anyone have a source directly from Google?

The article doesn't contain much substance.

[jasonkester]

My advice: Try to avoid making business decisions for emotional reasons. Do business based on rational analysis of the facts, or it will cost you in the long run.

Google seems to be ignoring that advice, ditching an entire operating system and all the potentially cool stuff that comes with it because they're a company full of developers who don't particularly like Windows, and because they compete with Microsoft and therefore hold a bit of a grudge.

They're certainly within their rights to do this, and they can justify it to themselves as being for "security reasons", but in the end all it will do is weaken them a little bit.

[lelele]

Of course they are not making a business decision for emotional reasons. By choosing an open source OS, Google gains more control on its systems, and avoids using a product of a competitor. Moreover, Google trusts its employees' judgement about a product: if you think your employees are competent, then you listen to them. If something, their decision weakens Microsoft.

[jrockway]

How do they test Chrome for Windows?

[ck2]

Wasn't Google in China hacked by an internal employee that really worked for the government?

[cognivore]

Heh, that's funny - that means I'm better at securing Windows than Google.

[naz]

China isn't trying to hack you