When Google was attacked by Chinese hackers earlier this year, it looked like they came in through an Internet Explorer vulnerability, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the search company are gradually phasing out the Windows operating system in their offices.
The Financial Times is reporting that they have been flocking away from the popular operating system since January, shortly after the attacks took place. New employees are offered either a Mac or a PC with Linux installed and although some workers can install the OS on their laptops but authorisation from “quite senior levels” is required if they want to keep it on their desktop PC’s.
On the one hand, Windows and particularly Microsoft’s native Internet Explorer browser have long been implicated as entry points through which hackers have accessed Google’s account data and obviously Microsoft are one of the company’s larger competitors.
But what implications – if any – does this have for the internet marketing and search engine optimisation communities?
Internet Marketing
On the face of things, the answer to this would be ‘probably nothing’, but as we all know, nothing is certain in this game.
While this move shouldn’t affect your search engine positions and – unless you’re Microsoft – probably won’t have any impact on your internet marketing campaign, it’s worth keeping this shift in mind when looking into Google’s latest foibles and potential algorithmic changes.
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