Do Google employees use Windows?

re: Do Google employees use Windows?

Robert Scoble — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 22:02:28 GMT

There's a lot of Windows users at Google. But a higher-than-usual percentage of Mac users. And of course all of its servers are on Linux.

re: Do Google employees use Windows?

Dugie — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 03:17:44 GMT

Love your style Keith. Keepin' it real!

re: Do Google employees use Windows?

Kris — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 23:22:42 GMT

I would definitely think yes. All the software for the end users built by Google is built for Windows users (Picaso, Google Desktop Search, Reader, to name a few). Although all the presentations by Google are being done on Mac. But I have to say their presentations have a bad visual quality compared to MS presentations. You can hardly see the code but may be it has nothing to do with the OS but they just decide to use low res.

re: Do Google employees use Windows?

Keith Combs — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 00:54:55 GMT

The presentation comment tickled me. I wanted to say I'd rather be known as the best search provider, but wait a minute, PowerPoint rocks if used properly.

As to the comment from Robert Scoble about the higher percentage of Mac users, that doesn't surprise me a bit. It probably has a lot to do with the location of their corporate office as well. We have a number of evangelist that use Macs so they can blend into those locations better. For instance, Robert recently met Anand Iyer. Anand has a Macbook and I've been giving him a hard time about it for years. Primarily because he is always converting HTML email into plain text. Grrrrr.... :)

This post was really about how you view your competition and should you use their products. The Google title is there because it's catchy but I do wonder sometimes how we are viewed by them.

If you sit back and take a broad view of all of this, you'll see all of the innovation that comes from all of the companies is for the greater good. For instance, look at Steve Jobs and Bill Gates on stage last week. Did we see a cat fight? Of course not. Now think of the markets created by each company. Amazing stuff.

We're still doing it. Google is doing it, and many others.

Who benefits?

You.

re: Do Google employees use Windows?

ai — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:48:16 GMT

@Keith :

> As to the comment from Robert Scoble about

> the higher percentage of Mac users, that

> doesn't surprise me a bit. It probably has

> a lot to do with the location of their

> corporate office as well. We have a number

> of evangelist that use Macs so they can

> blend into those locations better.

Well, I doubt "location" has much to do with it. The Mac's good for several reasons, but my 2 most compelling reasons to use it are

1. the hardware

2. garageband

If I had to take a guess as to why some of the others use it (like Googleites, Googlers, Googlians, whatever), it'd have to be because the Mac is a good blend of a Windows box and a Linux box. And the hardware is just fantastic.

> Do their employees use Windows, OS X or

> Linux?

All of the above. In my opinion, the majority is still Windoze.

re: Do Google employees use Windows?

Ben Tamblyn — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 22:58:45 GMT

Keith, A former colleague of mine has not long joined Google. On Day 1 he was asked the following questions:

1) Would you like a MAC or PC? Given he'd spent 8 years at MSFT and had no idea how to use a MAC he obviously opted for the PC. Needless to say there were a few raised eyebrows.

2) MS Office or OpenOffice? Unsurprisingly he chose Office having never used OO. Again more frowns.

3) IE of Firefox? Having never used FF he chose IE and was told tough he'd need to get used to it.

It's available but actively discouraged.

re: Do Google employees use Windows?

Keith Combs — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 09:41:18 GMT

Thanks Ben. If I were offered the same three choices, I would have picked the Macbook Pro, Microsoft Office 2007 for the PC and Firefox.

I would have made those choices because a smart Google employee would then have the best of both worlds. With virtualization, I would then add either Parallels or VMWare Fusion so I could run OS X as the host OS, but build VM's for WinXP, Vista, Office 2007, Linux and whatever else I needed to support the companies mission. If you look at the specs for the new and approved Macbook Pro, it's an enticing proposition even for a Microsoft evangelist.

I wish Apple would loosen the EULA for OS X so that it didn't say you can only install the OS on Apple branded hardware. That would make things very interesting.

I am not a robot!

Noticias externas — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:03:52 GMT

Since joining Microsoft almost two years ago, the same internal debate seems to arise every few months

I am not a robot!

My Technobabble — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 09:35:46 GMT

Since joining Microsoft almost two years ago, the same internal debate seems to arise every few months