Dans World

Google is phasing out the use of Microsoft's Windows operating systems on its company computers because of ongoing concerns about security, the Financial Times reports.

Google staff will instead be asked to use Apple's OS X operating system, or an open-source Linux platform, as the search giant tries to close the security loopholes that made it possible for Chinese hackers to gain access to email accounts. Security experts believe the hackers exploited a loophole in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to hack in to the Gmail accounts of human rights activists and Chinese dissidents.

"We're not doing any more Windows," one Google employee told the FT. "It's a security effort." Another said staff had been "moved away from Windows PCs. following the China hacking attacks".

Google, which employees around 10,000 people worldwide, is already encouraging new joiners to opt for Linux or OS X. "Linux is open source and we feel good about it," another member of staff told the FT. "Microsoft, we don't feel so good about."

Google has not commented specifically on the rumours. "We're always working to improve the efficiency of our business, but we do not comment on specific operational matters," said the company in a statement.

Microsoft has also refused to comment on the speculation.

Those members of staff who wish to continue using Windows on their machine will need clearance from "quite senior levels", according to the FT, but employees would have been more upset if Google had banned Macs running OS X rather than PCs running Windows.

The move highlights a growing tension between Google and Microsoft, which are competing in an increasing number of areas. Google is launching its own computer operating system, Chrome OS, to go head-to-head with Windows, while Google and Microsoft both have their own mobile operating systems. The recent launch of Microsoft's Bing search engine was an attempt to claw back some market share from Google, while both companies offer free web-based email and instant-messaging services.

"I don't think it's fair to say that Linux and Mac OS X are more secure than Windows, but I do think it's reasonable to claim that they're safer because of the much smaller number of attacks that target the platforms," said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with security specialists Sophos. "It's a bit like deciding where to go on holiday – Baghdad or Bournemouth? You can come to a sticky end in either, but I know where I would rather be to reduce my chances.

"Furthermore, with Google Chrome OS around the corner, this could be the first step towards Google proving that an enterprise company can survive without much dependency on Microsoft at all."

A new approach to China: an update

3/22/2010 12:03:00 PM

On January 12, we announced on this blog that Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers. We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger—had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn.

So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over.

Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced—it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.

In terms of Google's wider business operations, we intend to continue R&D work in China and also to maintain a sales presence there, though the size of the sales team will obviously be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access Google.com.hk. Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them. Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

Well done Google, its about time that they had full access to the web and all the information contained within, its a shame they have already blocked youtube according to the web page that Google created.

I spent a year living in china and I came across this issue a few times not being able to get to certain content which was very frustrating. im glad they have done this and lets hope the chinese dont block the search engine any time soon.

By Emma Barnett, Technology and Digital Media Correspondent
Published: 4:53PM GMT 17 Feb 2010

After announcing the deal in December 2009, the integration has now gone live. The results will show live updates from MySpace users including news, photos, music and blog posts that people had selected to make public, ranking the results by the most relevant.

Mike Jones, the recently promoted co-president of MySpace, said on the company’s blog: “This partnership increases our users’ ability to share and showcase content across the open Web and gives people outside the MySpace network even more ways to discover new content.

“Beginning today, when you search for anything on Google, as part of your search results you will see live updates from MySpace users, including news, photos, and blog posts that they have chosen to publicly publish. Further, all of these updates will be ranked to reflect the freshest, most relevant results, making it easier to find the latest information on anything you're searching for on Google, including the music and artists you enjoy most.”

Google has already integrated real-time updates from Twitter and is working on the best way to deliver these results in order to enrich the search experience.

Last year, the increasing popularity of Twitter, started to make the search engine seem slow and unable to serve the latest updates on fast-moving stories in real-time. During last summer's protests in Iran, for example, a Google search on the country delivered Iran’s Wikipedia entry or a recent news article about the clashes. However, a search on Twitter showed the latest news from the people on the streets of Tehran as events unfolded.

This led to both Google and Microsoft’s Bing, partnering with Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, in order to make their searches more relevant and faster.

well it was only a matter of time till they finally rolled it out, tbh i wasnt that aware that myspace still had a large following.

im guessing everything helps with regards to promoting information from websites such as this, and if the information being shown in the search results is relevant to what im looking for then that brilliant, much like their integration of live twitter feeds into the results,