By Dan Satherley
Google is ditching Microsoft's Windows operating system in favour of Apple's Mac OS and Linux.
The report, carried by London newspaper the The Financial Times, says the directive is in response to January's Chinese cyberattack on the company.
“We’re not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort,” an unnamed employee tells the paper.
“Many people have been moved away from PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks,” says another.
Google declined to make an official comment on the report, which claims that although employees can make their own choice of operating system, since the attack "senior level" approval is required to use Windows.
Before the attacks, which led to Google redirecting Chinese users to its uncensored Hong Kong-based search engine, Google was reportedly already encouraging employees to consider using a different operating system, perhaps in preparation for the release of its own Chrome OS.
“It would have made more people upset if they banned Macs rather than Windows,” one employee tells The Financial Times.
Windows is by far the world's most popular operating system, installed on over 90 percent of computers worldwide.
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